m 


HenepcmiYiissMs 


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AU'Buckland.M.A. 


PRINCETON,  N.  J.  ^' 


0 / 


BV  2060  .B82  1894 

Buckland,  Augustus  Robert, 

1857- 

Shelf 

The  heroic  in  missions 

J  I- 


THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 


THE 

HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

PIONEERS  IN  SIX  FIELDS 


BY  / 

THE  REV.  AUGUSTUS  R.  BUCKLAND  M.A. 

MORNING    PREACHER   AT   THE   FOUNDLING   HOSPITAL 


NEW    YORK 
THOMAS     WHITTAKER 

2  &  3   BIBLE   HOUSE 
1894 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

1.       THE    HEROISM    OF    PATIENCE 7 

II.       THE    PIONEER    IN    JAPAN 25 

in.  THE    GRAVES    BY   THE    VICTORIA    NYANZA  .            .            -43 

IV.  A    PIONEER    IN    THE    FAR    WEST             .            .            .            .       61 

V.  THE    PILGRIM    MISSIONARY    OF    THE    PUNJAB         .            ,       81 

VI.  THE    MEN    WHO    DIED    AT    LOKOJA        ...            .            .97 


"  'III  and  o'envovked,  how  fare  you  in  this  scejie ?  ' 
'Bravely,'  said  he,  'for  I  of  late  have  been 
Much  cheered  with  thoughts  of  Christ,  the  Living  Bread.' 
0  human  soul  I  as  long  as  thou  canst  so 
Set  up  a  mark  of  everlasting  light 
Above  the  howling  senses'  ebb  and  flow, 
To  cheer  thee,  and  to  right  thee  if  thou  roam, 
Not  with  lost  toil  thou  labourest  through  the  night! 
Thou  mak'st  the  heaven  thou  hop'sf  indeed  thy  home." 

Matthew  Arnold. 


THE  HEROISM  OF   PATIENCE 


THE  HEROISM  OF  PATIENCE 

fEw  things  are  more  remarkable  or  more 
welcome  than  the  recent  increase  of  interest 
in  foreign  missions.  Measured  by  any 
known  test,  that  increase  is  striking.  Though 
the  need  of  more  recruits  is  everywhere  urgent, 
the  best  and  noblest  of  men  and  women  now  give 
themselves  to  the  work  in  numbers  few  would 
have  dared  to  look  for  twenty  years  ago.  The 
funds  contributed,  if  still  miserably  dispropor- 
tionate to  our  national  wealth,  our  national 
savings,  or  our  national  responsibilities,  must 
nevertheless  be  deemed  large.  And  public 
opinion,  represented  by  the  press,  has  veered 
round  in  favour  of  the  missionary.  Once  it  was 
the  fashion  to  write  of  the  work  and  its  agents 
with  undisguised  contempt.  Sometimes  charity 
allowea  the  missionary  to  be  dismissed  as  a 
mere  fanatic ;    but  not  seldom  his  motives  were 


10  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

impugned,  his  aims  misrepresented,  and  his  Ufa 
caricatured  for  the  entertainment  of  all  observers. 
There  has  been  of  late  a  slight  recrudescence  of 
these  outrages.  But  it  is  only  a  witness  to  the 
success  of  a  movement  which  challenges  at  every 
step  the  hostility  of  the  cynical  rationalist  or  of 
the  nominal  Christian.  It  may  serve  also  to 
remind  us  that  sometimes  a  missionary  society 
exhibits  its  mere  humanity  by  making  a  mistake. 
It  chooses  the  wrong  man,  and  the  wrong  man 
brings  discredit  on  his  class. 

Events  have  favoured  the  cause.  The  devotion 
of  a  little  band  who  went  out  to  China  with  Mr. 
C.  T.  Studd  and  Mr.  Stanley  Smith  stirred 
inquiry  in  quarters  where  missionary  enterprise 
may  have  been  regarded  as  the  proper  pursuit  of 
the  weakling  rather  than  of  the  men  who  had 
taken  the  highest  honours  on  the  cricket-field  and 
the  river.  The  murder  of  Bishop  Hannington 
and  the  frightful  persecution  of  the  young  con- 
verts in  Uganda  repeated  the  martyr  triumphs  of 
apostolic  days.  The  death  of  James  Gilmour 
called  to  his  countrymen's  mind  the  courage  of 
the  pioneer  who  braved  the  perils  of  an  attempt 
to  evangelise  the  Mongols.    The  loss  of  Alexander 


THE  HEROISM  OF  PATIENCE  ii 

Mackay  in  his  dogged  hoping  and  waiting  and 
working  for  better  times  around  the  Victoria 
Nyanza ;  the  wonderful  records  of  peril  and 
preservation  which  we  have  learned  to  associate 
with  the  name  of  John  G.  Paton  ;  the  eloquence 
of  such  deaths  as  those  of  Bishop  French,  essay- 
ing single-handed  new  fields  in  his  old  age,  or 
of  J.  Alfred  Robinson  and  Graham  Wilmot 
Brooke,  resigning  all  to  live  a  little  while  and 
then  to  die  by  the  waters  of  the  Niger — these 
things,  coming  to  a  generation  which  has  not 
forgotten  Livingstone,  or  Moffat,  or  Patteson, 
have  left  their  mark  perceptibly  upon  it. 

There  is  still  much  to  be  done.  It  is  some- 
thing to  get  the  work  known  in  the  circle  of  its 
intimate  friends  ;  but  it  is  well  to  make  the  interest 
more  general,  to  carry  the  intelligence  beyond  the 
limits  of  subscribers'  homes,  and  to  deliver  it  as 
news  from  the  front  to  all  who  claim  part  or  lot 
in  the  Church  of  Christ.  In  view  of  this  no 
apology  is  needed  for  an  attempt  once  more  to 
illustrate  the  heroic  side  of  missionary  enterprise. 
The  illustrations  are  taken  from  the  work  of  one 
organisation  to  give  the  story  greater  coherence, 
and  not  from  any  belief  that  the  history  of  the 


12  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

Church  Missionary  Society  is  distinguished  above 
that  of  all  other  agencies  in  this  particular. 

Let  us  begin  with  the  Heroism  of  Patience.  It 
is  the  heroism  which  the  world  is  least  disposed 
to  recognise,  but  it  tries  the  soul  most.  It  was 
the  capacity  to  stand  ''hard  pounding"  which 
won  Waterloo.  The  same  endurance  is  needed 
in  the  mission-field.  At  home  there  sit  sub- 
scribers, waiting,  sometimes  too  exactingly,  to  hear 
of  triumphs.  At  home  there  sit  the  critics,  who 
have  put  a  price  upon  the  conversion  of  a  soul 
and  are  prepared  to  tell  you  whether  it  is  cheap 
or  dear.  In  the  field  the  worker  is  face  to  face 
with  natures  that  seem  utterly  unlike  the  natures 
he  has  known ;  with  prejudices,  compacted  by  the 
usage  of  generations,  which  laugh  to  scorn  the 
advent  of  one  man  with  a  message ;  with  the 
hostility  of  priests,  of  temple-servers,  the 
ministers  of  idolatry  and  of  superstition  ;  with 
the  foe  within — physical  depression,  mental 
distress,  even  doubt  as  to  the  purpose  and 
favour  of  God. 

In  almost  every  field  worked  by  the  Church 
Missionary  Society  the  heroism  of  patience  has 
been    called    for.      In    Sierra    Leone,    when    the 


THE  HEROISM  OF  PATIENCE  13 

century  was  young,  fifteen  missionaries  and 
eleven  wives  had  reached  the  field,  and  fifteen  of 
the  twenty-six  had  died  before  the  first  convert 
was  baptised  by  Edward  Bickersteth.  On 
Christmas  Day  1 8 14 — -the  very  day  whereon 
the  first  Indian  bishop  preached  his  first  sermon 
in  Calcutta — Samuel  Marsden  opened  the  Church 
Missionary  Society's  work  amongst  the  Maories. 
It  was  eleven  years  before  one  convert  came  in, 
and  five  years  again  before  others  followed. 
The  earliest  attempt  to  reach  the  Gonds  of  India 
was  made  in  1835.  The  work  was  re-organised, 
after  intei'vals,  in  1 879 ;  but  it  was  not  till 
1885  that  the  first-fruits  were  gathered.  The 
Fuh-Kien  mission  was  planted  in  1850;  there 
were  no  baptisms  until  1861.  The  remnant 
of  the  pioneer  mission  to  Uganda  reached  the 
capital  in  1877.  Not  until  1882  were  the 
first  five  converts  welcomed.  It  would  be  easy 
to  extend  the  list ;  but  instead,  let  us  illustrate 
the  heroism  of  patience  more  fulty  by  the  histor}'- 
of  Fuh-Kien. 

The    exponents    of   missionary    enterprise    are 
sometimes  told    that    they  mistake   their   oppor- 


14  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

tunities ;  that  they  should  confine  themselves 
to  the  gentler  races  of  heathendom,  and  to 
those  whose  worship,  such  as  it  is,  condemns 
the  faithful  to  a  life  of  apprehension  or  of  vice, 
rather  than  to  the  Mohammedan,  the  Buddhist, 
or  the  follower  of  Confucius.  The  proposal 
would  be  excellent  if  all  religions  were  equally 
matters  of  mere  human  speculation,  and  every 
man  might  safely  choose  as  temperament  or 
surroundings  suggested.  But  the  Christian  is 
not  a  free  agent.  He  is  charged  with  the  re- 
sponsibility of  a  message  to  the  world,  and 
he  may  not  select  the  easiest  places  whereat 
to  deliver  it.  The  same  spirit  which  carried 
St.  Paul  to  Corinth,  to  Athens,  to  Rome,  has 
compelled  the  missionaries  to  attack  China  and 
Japan,  Eg3^pt  and  Persia,  as  well  as  the  centres  of 
cultivated  error  in  India. 

It  was  in  this  spirit  that  the  Committee  of 
the  Church  Missionary  Society  resolved  to 
enter  the  Chinese  province  of  Fuh-Kien.  Its 
area  was  ample,  for  the  missionaries  had  a 
territory  nearly  as  large  as  England  to  look  on 
as  their  parish.  The  people  were  not  far  to 
seek;  there    were    20,000,000    of    them,    gentle 


THE  HEROISM  OF  PATIENCE  15 

and  simple,  learned  and  ignorant ;  by  repute 
headstrong,  self-reliant,  turbulent;  by  way  of 
faith,  worshipping  in  the  temples  of  Buddhism, 
or  practising  the  stern  austerities  of  Taouism, 
or  staying  their  souls  upon  the  maxims  of 
Confucius ;  in  their  heart  of  hearts,  caring 
most  of  all  for  their  ancestors — and  them- 
selves. 

To  assault  this  stronghold,  the  Church  Mission- 
ary Society  chose,  in  1849,  ^wo  representatives. 
It    was    a    small    force,    but    composed    of    the 
right     men.       William     Welton,     a    Cambridge 
graduate,    who   for   twelve   years   had    practised 
as    a   surgeon    at    Woodbridge,  in    Suffolk,    was 
the  leader.     He  was  forty  when  he  entered  the 
service  of  the  Society,  an  age  at  which  few  men 
seek   the   mission-field,  and  yet   an    age    which, 
combined  with  experience    such  as    Mr.  Welton 
had  enjoyed,  fitted  him  w^ell  for  a  task  requiring 
other    qualities    besides    the    ardour    commonly 
associated  with  youth.     Robert  David  Jackson — 
who  is  still,   I  believe,  living — came  from  York, 
was   trained    by   the    Society,  and    ordained    on 
reaching  China.     The   destination    of  these  two 
was  the  great  city  of  Fuh-Chow,  the  capital  of 


i6  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

the  province,  in  which  European  merchants  had 
been,  in  their  own  quarter,  famihar  figures 
since  Fuh-Chow  was  opened  in  1844.  Its  walls 
enclosed  600,000  people,  a  flock  large  enough 
to  content  the  most  fervent  evangelist. 

The  pioneers  arrived  in  May  1850.  One 
advantage  they  gained  forthwith.  As  a 
concession  to  their  nationality,  they  were 
allowed  to  live  within  the  city  walls.  A  part 
of  a  temple  on  Wu-shih-shan,  or  Blackstone 
Hill,  was  allotted  to  them  as  a  residence. 
From  their  door  the  whole  of  ^'  The  Happy 
City "  lay  stretched  before  the  eye ;  around 
it  the  beautiful  valley  of  the  Min ;  closing 
the  view,  a  range  of  stately  hills,  behind 
which  lies  the  black-tea  district   of  Bohea. 

Whilst  wrestling  with  the  difficulties  of  the 
language,  the  two  pioneers  were  still  able  to 
do  some  work.  Mr.  Welton  opened  a  dis- 
pensary, and  so  won  for  the  cause  a  degree 
of  toleration  which  might  otherwise  have 
been  sought  in  vain.  For  the  //Icrali,  who 
were  strong  in  numbers  on  Blackstone  Hill, 
observed  the  presence  of  the  "  foreign  devils  " 
with      extreme      discontent.       Nor     was     their 


THE  HEROISM  OF  PATIENCE  17 

chagrin     lessened     when    the    common     people 
— the    same   who    heard    Christ    gladly — began 
to  find  the  dispensary  a  real  help.     These  came 
and  were   profited,  and   whilst    receiving   bodily 
aid  were   directed    in    a   Chinese    leaflet    to    the 
Physician     of    souls.     The    news    spread,     and 
patients    of    the    better    class    soon    presented 
themselves.     It   was    impossible   that    this    kind 
of  thing   should    be    allowed    to    go    on.     The 
literati  began    a   system    of    petty   molestations. 
The    tiles  were    carried    from    the    roof   of   the 
temple — a    hint     which     has     frequently     been 
repeated      during      more      recent      troubles      in 
China.     The    garden-door   was    removed    as    an 
equally  plain  suggestion.     An   appeal  was  made 
to  the   populace ;  and  the   lessee  of  the  temple, 
finding  himself  in    evil    odour    by  reason  of  his 
bargain    with    the     missionaries,    finally   sought 
release  from  his  engagement.     In  the  meantime 
the  temple  was    crowded  with    eager  applicants, 
and     two     successful     operations     for      tumour 
made    Mr.    Welton    famous.       But    the    literati 
carried   their    appeal    to     Pekin,    and,    to    save 
further  trouble,  the  mission-station  was  removed 
to  other  buildings. 


THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 


The  first  year  passed.  Something  had  been 
done ;  but  of  converts  there  was  no  sign. 
Settled,  however,  in  new  quarters,  Mr.  Welton 
still  found  numberless  patients.  But  opposition 
was  far  from  dead.  On  the  ninth  day  of  the 
ninth  month  185 1 — All  Saints'  Day  with  us — a 
crowd  of  pleasure-seekers,  keeping  the  seasonal 
festivities  on  Blackstone  Hill,  varied  their  kite- 
flying by  an  attack  on  the  mission  premises. 
They  wrecked  the  place ;  but  Mr.  Welton,  aided 
by  a  friendly  priest,  escaped  their  too  pressing 
attentions.  Nothing  daunted,  he  set  to  work 
once  more. 

The  second  year  passed.  Mr.  Welton  was 
now  alone,  Mr.  Jackson  being  removed  to  other 
work.  The  policy  was  bad,  but  it  is  ancient 
history  now.  And  converts  there  were  none. 
But  the  patient  Welton  still  toiled  on,  learn- 
ing the  language  and  increasing  in  facility  of 
utterance  day  by  day. 

The  third  year  passed,  and  the  signs  were 
the  same.  Pekin  was  for  the  time  against  the 
solitary  worker.  He  had  tried  to  open  a  school, 
but  the  teachers  he  secured  were  seized,  tortured, 
and  imprisoned  for   no  other  reason   than   their 


THE  HEROISM  OF  PATIENCE  19 


connection  with  him.  They  could  silence  the 
native,  but  not  the  European.  He  ministered  to 
their  sick;  in  the  leper  village  he  preached 
Christ ;  he  mingled  with  the  thousands  of  students 
who  flocked  to  the  city  for  their  examinations ; 
he  proclaimed  the  doctrines  of  Jesus  in  the  midst 
of  the  Tartar  garrison ;  he  discoursed  with  the 
villagers  outside  the  walls. 

When  four  long  years  were  gone,  there  were 
still  no  converts.  Yet  it  seemed  to  Mr.  Welton 
that  things  were  ripening  for  a  future  harvest. 
Writing  in  1854,  he  saw  distinct  signs  of  change 
in  the  attitude  of  the  people.  Books  were  now 
sought  for  eagerly ;  the  patients  treated  at  the 
dispensary  became  excellent  tract  distributors ; 
and  even  the  literati  seemed  less  hostile.  But  the 
year  1854  passed,  and  still  there  was  not  a  single 
convert  to  claim.  The  following  year  saw  the 
commercial  activity  of  Fuh-Chow  much  increased, 
and,  possibly  owing  to  the  larger  population 
drawn  thither,  the  work  at  Mr.  Welton's  dis- 
pensary was  greater  than  ever.  The  patients 
were  estimated  at  3,000,  and  many  persons  of 
standing  so  far  overcame  their  scruples  as  to 
welcome  the  missionary  at  their  own  homes  and 


20  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

listen  to  his  message.  But  a  polite  hearing 
is  not  everything — even  at  home.  In  China  it 
seemed  to  bear  no  immediate  fruit. 

For  three  years  Mr.  Welton  had  now  been 
alone,  but  in  1855  he  was  joined  by  two  recruits. 
The  elder  of  these,  the  Rev.  Matthew  Fearnley,  a 
Cambridge  wrangler,  now  an  incumbent  in  the 
diocese  of  Chester,  had  for  four  years  served  a 
Yorkshire  curacy,  when  he  volunteered  for  the 
mission-field.  His  companion,  the  Rev.  Francis 
McCaw,  was  an  Ulster  man  from  Larne,  an 
alumnus  of  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  who  had  been 
five  years  in  orders.  Their  first  work  was  to 
learn  the  language ;  but  before  they  were  able  to 
preach  in  public  Mr.  Welton  had  left  the  field. 
The  long  strain  had  at  last  broken  him  down.  A 
visit  to  Shanghai  was  first  tried,  for  he  could  not 
bring  himself  to  leave  China.  It  was  ineffectual  ; 
and  he  sailed  for  England,  only,  however,  after  a 
brief  respite,  to  die.  To  the  last  his  heart  was  in 
the  work,  and  a  legacy  of  i^  1,500  testified  to  his 
wish  that  it  should  be  continued. 

The  end  of  1856  came,  and  still  there  were  no 
converts.  Yet  the  two  young  missionaries  were 
gladly    Hstened    to.     People    eagerly    sought    for 


THE  HEROISM  OF  PATIENCE  21 

books  containing  ''  the  doctrines  of  Jesus."  Even 
in  the  main  street  a  varied  crowd  would  listen. 
The  aged  and  heavy-laden  would  ask,  "  Is  Jesus 
still  alive  ?  "  The  rich  young  man  would  in  jest 
inquire,  ''  What  must  we  do,  if  we  believe  in 
Jesus  ? "  A  poor  trader  would  advance  as  a 
conclusive  objection,  that  Jesus,  if  God,  should 
^^make  the  rice  cheaper."  The  native  moralist 
would  denounce  the  missionary  as  kin  to  the  men 
who  brought  the  opium.  Some,  who  had  suffered, 
directly  or  indirectly,  from  the  use  of  the  drug, 
would  menace  the  speaker,  and  seek  to  raise  a 
tumult.  Then  sorrow  fell  upon  the  workers. 
Mr.  McCaw  suffered  first  the  loss  of  his  wife ; 
and  in  1857  he  followed  her  to  the  grave.  Like 
Welton,  he  had  to  pass  away  uncheered  by  the 
thought  of  one  accession  to  the  fold  of  Christ. 
Mrs.  Fearnley  was  in  peril  of  her  life,  but  it  was 
not  until  1859  that,  on  her  account,  Mr.  Fearnley 
left  the  field. 

And  still  there  were  no  converts.  The  mission 
was  nine  years  old.  In  some  respects  it  had  been 
singularly  happy.  But  was  it  well  to  spend  labour 
on  a  field  that  seemed  so  hopelessly  barren  ?  The 
question  was   already   being   discussed  at   home. 


22  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

and  in   i860  a  strong  party  within  the  Society's 
Committee  held  that  the  lack  of  fruit  was  so  con- 
spicuous  as   to  show  that    God  was    calling  the 
workers    to    some  other  field.     But  at  this  time 
there  was  in  Fuh-Chow  a  man  of  Mr.  Welton's 
spirit.  George  Smith  was  prepared  for  the  mission- 
field   in   the    Society's  own  college,  and  reached 
China  in  August  1858.      Before  he  could  speak 
the  vernacular  with  ease  he  was  at  work,  imper- 
fectly, but  with  a  zeal  which  even  the  phlegmatic 
Chinaman  could  recognise,  preaching  the  Gospel 
of  Christ,  amidst  the  crowds,  to  individuals,  to  the 
poor,  and  to  the  literati  up  for  their  examinations. 
But  fruits  ?     None.     Yet  when  at  a  Missionary 
Conference,  to  which  he  went,  others  suggested 
his  withdrawal,   Mr.  Smith  refused  to  admit  the 
thought.     ''  If  I  have  to  work  with  my  hands  for 
my  daily   bread,    I   will    stop    at    Fuh-Chow.     I 
believe  that  the    Lord  has  much  people  in  that 
city.    I  believe  He  sent  me  there  to  work  for  Him, 
and  I  mean  to  stop  there."     This  is  the  faith  that 
removes  mountains.     In  the  face  of  such  appeals 
the  Committee  at  home  could  not  call  the  worker 
from  his  field.     He  redoubled  his  labours,  and,  in 
the  eleventh  year  of  the  mission's  existence,  he 


THE  HEROISM  OF  PATIENCE  23 

was  able  to  write  home :  "  I  hope  that  a  brighter 
day  is  about  to  dawn  upon  us.  There  are  three 
men  whom  I  really  look  upon  as  honest  inquirers." 
In  1 86 1  these  three  and  one  more  were  baptized. 
But  the  man  whose  faith  prevailed  only  lived 
until  October  1863,  and  then  he,  too,  was  called 
away. 

When  Mr.  Smith  died  at  Fuh-Chow  there  were 
thirteen  baptized  Christians  and  five  ''  catechu- 
mens." Two  years  later  there  were  35  converts  ; 
in  1868,  no  fewer  than  227;  in  1877,  the 
adherents  numbered  2,323;  in  1893,  they  were 
10,323.  The  mission  has  prospered  in  the 
numbers,  in  the  zeal,  in  the  fidelity  of  its 
members  under  persecution,  as  few  missions 
have.  One  of  Smith's  successors  baptized,  in  a 
few  years,  over  1,000  converts.  The  Gospel  has 
won  its  way  more  surely  in  Fuh-Kien  than  in 
provinces  where  the  first  recruits  were  gathered 
in  more  swiftly.  Perhaps  it  is  thus  that  the 
heroism  of  patience  finds  its  answer.  But  is  it 
not  heroism  which  so  patiently  works,  waits,  and 
hopes  ? 


THE  PIONEER  IN  JAPAN 


^ 


THE  PIONEER  IN  JAPAN 

HE  unlocking  of  Japan  is  one  of  the  most 
romantic  chapters  in  the  history  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  But  to  the  student 
of  foreign  missions  it  is  all  the  more  interesting 
because  access  to  the  Land  of  the  Rising  Sun  has 
meant  the  opportunity  of  repairing  a  colossal 
blunder.  To  the  missionary  we  owe  the  seclusion 
in  which,  for  two  hundred  and  thirty  years,  Japan 
dwelt.  It  was  for  the  missionaries  of  a  later  era 
to  show  that  the  message  of  Christianity,  rightly 
interpreted,  meant  no  assault  upon  throne  or  con- 
stitution, but  only  upon  faiths  powerless  ade- 
quately to  meet  the  needs  of  men. 

The  task  of  first  carrying  the  Gospel  to  Japan, 
when  the  long-closed  door  had  been  opened,  was 
no  child's-play.  The  dangers  were  many,  the 
difficulties  unique.  They  were  not  quite  the 
same  perils  as  confronted  the  few  men  who  stood 


28  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

by  Samuel  Marsden's  side  in  New  Zealand.  They 
diflfered  from  the  insidious  and  too  often  fatal 
assaults  which  inflicted  such  crushing  loss  upon 
the  early  mission  forces  in  Sierra  Leone.  They 
can  readily  be  distinguished  from  the  perils  which 
struck  down  Smith  and  O'Neill  on  the  way  to 
Uganda.  They  were  but  distantly  related  to  the 
sorrows  which  fell  thick  and  fast  during  the  early 
history  of  the  Universities  Mission  to  Eastern 
Equatorial  Africa.  They  do  not  suggest  com- 
parison with  the  marvellous  story  of  peril  and  of 
triumph  associated  with  Mr.  Duncan's  early  work 
in  Metlakahtla.  The  Pacific  missions  abound  in 
many  more  incidents  that  touch  the  popular 
imagination.  The  story  of  Allen  Gardiner  and  of 
the  South  American  Mission  appears  far  more 
stirring  to  the  emotional  side  of  our  natures. 
And  yet,  as  it  seems  to  me,  the  pioneers  of 
Christianity  amongst  the  awakened  Japanese 
worked  under  conditions  so  remarkable  that  they 
well  deserve  a  place  to  themselves.  They  had  a 
past  to  redeem,  and  although  that  past  had  been 
made  and  marred  by  the  pioneers  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  faith,  it  was  the  name  of  Christianity 
which  had  thereby  come  into  disrepute  so  signal. 


THE  PIONEER  IN  JAPAN  29 


That    name    it    was    for    Protestant  workers    to 
clear. 

The  earlier  history  of  Christian  missions  in 
Japan  was  of  a  kind  both  to  encourage  and  dis- 
courage new  attempts.  In  the  steps  of  Mendez 
Pinto,  whose  ship  the  storms  carried  to  the  coast 
of  Japan  in  1542,  there  followed,  after  an  interval 
of  seven  years,  no  less  a  person  than  Francis 
Xavier.  A  native,  who  had  found  his  way  to 
Goa,  assured  Xavier  that  his  countrymen  would 
listen  to  a  missionary's  message,  compare  his  life 
with  his  teaching,  and,  if  satisfied,  flock  to  Christ. 
The  statement  was  encouraging,  and  Xavier  lost 
little  time  in  acting  upon  it.  The  field  surely  was 
inviting  ;  a  calm  hearing  and  a  candid  examination 
promised  to  the  preachers  of  the  new  faith  !  In 
some  respects  that  early  statement  might  be  made 
of  the  Japanese  to-day.  They  too  hear,  watch, 
and  compare.  But  for  us  there  lies  a  danger  less 
conspicuous  in  Xavier's  time,  for  all  Europeans 
who  profess  Christianity  must  by  their  conduct 
witness  for  or  against  the  faith.  They  have  not 
always  been  living  evidences  of  its  worth.  Sir 
Rutherford  Alcock,  writing  more  than  three 
centuries    after   the   words    of  Xavier's    convert. 


30  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 


numbered  amongst  the  obstacles  to  missionary 
enterprise  in  Japan  the  shocking  contrast  between 
the  doctrines  preached  by  the  missionaries  and 
the  manner  of  Hfe  practised  by  the  average  Euro- 
pean resident. 

Xavier  reached  Japan  in  August  1 549,  and  he 
found  his  way  amid  many  privations,  against 
many  difficulties,  and  with  much  suffering,  to  the 
capital.  To  himself,  however,  but  little  success 
was  granted.  Yet  he  had  scarcely  left  the  land, 
after  a  sojourn  of  two  or  three  years,  before 
the  new  doctrines  found  acceptance  everywhere. 
Thirty  years  after  Xavier's  arrival  there  were 
150,000  converts  in  Japan.  It  seemed  a  mere 
question  of  calculation  what  time  should  elapse 
before  all  the  land  would  be  Christian.  This 
success  may  have  been  due  in  part  to  political 
causes ;  yet,  remembering  subsequent  events,  we 
have  no  reason  to  estimate  lightly  the  faith  of 
those  Jesuit  converts.  But  success  brought  its 
own  perils.  Buddhism  was  persecuted  with  all 
the  horrors  which  Rome  of  that  period  so  freely 
used.  Rome  took  the  sword,  and  presently  fell 
thereby.  She  conspired  against  the  ruling 
powers,  and  by  them  was  ruthlessly  dealt  with. 


THE  PIONEER  IN  JAPAN  31 

The  Shogun  issued  in  1587  a  decree  of  expulsion 
against  the  Jesuits,  whom  he  deemed,  with  good 
reason,    hostile   to    the   independence   of  Japan. 
Persecution  resulting,  civil  war  ensued.     In  the 
East  they  know  how  to  torture.     Neither  Chinese 
nor  Japanese  had  much  to  learn  from  the  West 
in  that.      But   the  things   done  in  the   name    of 
Christianity  might  to  the  popular  mind  have  ex- 
cused the  cruelties  practised  upon  its  confessors. 
With  such  measure  as  the  Jesuits  had  been  wont 
to  mete  it  was  measured  to  their  converts  again. 
How  did  they  bear  it  ?     Not  the  records  of  the 
early  Christian  Church,  not  the  history  of  that 
dark  era  in  the  Christian  life  of  Madagascar,  not 
the  story  of  the  young  converts  hewn  piecemeal 
to  death  or  roasted  alive  in  Uganda,  show  nobler 
faith    than    that    of  these    Japanese    Romanists. 
The  ingenuity  of  the  East  spent  itself  in  devising 
new  tortures,  but  spent  itself  in  vain.     The  un- 
faithful were  few.     Long  the  terror  raged,  until 
at    last   an    unsuccessful    blow    for   freedom    left 
nearly  forty  thousand  Christians  at  once  in  the 
hands    of  their  oppressors.     Their   reward    was 
death.     Yet  Christianity   was    not   extinguished. 
Lacking  the  Bible,  it  could  not  grow  as  under  the 


32  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 


same  terms  it  had  grown  in  Madagascar  ;  but  it 
lingered  on  in  corners,  and  as  late  as  1829 
martyrs  were  found  to  suffer.  This,  in  spite  of 
a  native  inquisition  which,  from  1636  until  the 
treaties  with  Christian  nations,  provided  for  due 
inquiry  into  the  faith  of  suspected  persons.  A 
plate  graven  with  a  representation  of  the  Saviour 
had  to  be  trodden  upon  by  suspects  who  would 
avoid  condemnation.  Even  as  late  as  1869  perse- 
cution tore  from  their  homes  three  thousand 
natives  who  were  of  this  remnant.  And,  lest 
Xavier  should  have  successors  from  over  the 
sea,  the  public  notice-boards  of  the  Empire  dis- 
played an  inscription  which  began  thus  : 

*'  So  long  as  the  sun  shall  warm  the  earth,  let 
no  Christian  be  so  bold  as  to  come  to  Japan." 

Into  the  history  of  the  causes  which  broke 
down  the  resultant  seclusion  we  need  not  enter  in 
detail  here.  They  were  external  and  internal ; 
first,  pressure  from  foreign  powers,  which  gave 
access  to  certain  ports ;  then  the  great  revolution 
of  1868,  which  abolished  the  feudal  system, 
restored  the  power  of  the  Mikado,  and  opened 
Japan  to  Western  influences.     The  political  and 


THE  PIONEER  IN  JAPAN  33 


social  habits  of  centuries  were  then  laid  aside,  and 
a  new  era  began. 

When  the  first  step — the  opening  of  the  treaty 
ports  —  was  made,  five  American  societies 
established  themselves  within  the  prescribed 
limits ;  but  it  was  not  until  the  year  of  the 
revolution  that  the  Church  Missionary  Society 
found  the  means  and  the  man  to  attack  Japan. 
In  that  year  the  Rev.  George  Ensor,  a  Cambridge 
graduate,  was  chosen  as  the  first  messenger  of 
English  Christianity  to  the  New  Empire. 

There  was  legal  access  to  the  country,  but  to 
preach  Christ  was  still  against  the  law  of  the 
land.  The  foreigner,  when  he  took  his  walks 
abroad,  was  reminded  of  the  fact  by  the  omni- 
present notices,  '^  The  laws  hitherto  enforced 
forbidding  Christianity  are  to  be  strictly 
observed."  This  statement  did  not  come  of 
a  stolid  conservatism  which  clung  to  relics  of 
the  past  when  the  very  cause  of  their  origin 
was  forgotten.  Into  such  grievous  disrepute  had 
the  political  activities  of  the  Jesuits  brought 
Christianity,  that  the  nation  was  well  content  to 
deem  it  a  most  dangerous  foe.  Its  long  past 
history  was  a  blot  upon    the    fair    fame    of   the 

c 


34 


THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 


nation.  The  man  who  would  compass  its  restor- 
ation must  needs  be  an  enemy  of  the  common- 
wealth. This  suspicion  had  little  upon  which 
to  feed,  for  it  was  usual  to  regard  the  foreign 
faith  as  extinct.  Save  to  a  few  experts,  whose 
business  it  was  to  know  the  signs  by  which 
any  adherent  of  Christianity  might  be  detected, 
its  nature  was  unknown.  But  it  was  a  thing  to 
be  held  in  national  abhorrence  ;  and  even  apart 
from  this,  whilst  the  laws  against  Christianity 
were  still  in  force,  any  investigation  of  its  tenets, 
or  curiosity  as  to  its  possible  value,  might  be 
extremely  inconvenient  to  the  inquirer.  Was  it 
so  very  long  ago  that  they  crucified  at  Osaka  that 
old  woman  and  those  six  men  who,  in  their  own 
imperfect  way,  worshipped  Christ  ? 

There  was,  too,  another  feeling.  Christianit}' 
was  the  faith  of  the  foreigner.  Now,  despite  the 
marvellous  curiosit}^,  eagerness  to  learn,  and 
readiness  to  adopt  changes,  so  conspicuous  in  the 
New  Japan,  there  were  still  everywhere  men  who 
distrusted  all  reform,  and  especially  such  as 
touched  their  faith.  Their  hearts  went  back  to 
the  old  feudal  system,  and  to  the  old  exclusive- 
ness     of    tlicir    earlier    days.       They    could    not 


THE   PIONEER  IX  JAPAN  35 

accommodate  themselves,  with  the  facility  of  a 
woman  wearing  a  new  dress,  to  the  strange 
sights  and  sounds  and  habits  which  met  them 
at  every  turn.  But  if  these  had  to  be  endured, 
was  it  a  matter  of  necessity  to  take  the 
Western  faith  also  ?  From  the  first,  men  of 
this  stamp  had  made  themselves  obnoxious  to 
the  foreigner. 

Nor,  it  must  be  confessed,  was  their  attitude 
surprising.  The  morality  of  the  Europeans  in 
the  treaty-ports  in  the  earlier  days  of  intercourse 
was  largely  inferior  to  that  of  the  Japanese  them- 
selves. Whilst,  therefore,  the  missionaries 
preached,  the  lay  European  often  practised  in 
a  way  that  made  his  nominal  faith  a  by-word 
and  reproach.  Further,  the  old  religions  of  the 
land  had  a  large  official  following.  The  census 
of  1875  showed  that  there  were,  for  a  population 
of  about  35,000,000,  no  fewer  than  207,000  priests, 
monks,  nuns,  and  other  ''  religious "  persons. 
Moreover,  both  Buddhism  and  Shintoism  had 
been  closely  allied  with  the  State  ;  and  even 
before  the  final  severance  between  Church  and 
State  in  1884,  the  devotees  of  either  faith  could 
have  foreseen  the   inevitable   results    of  contact 


36  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 


with  Western  ideas  upon  the  old  reHgions  as  well 
as  upon  the  social  life  of  the  country. 

We  have  said  enough  to  show  that  the  attempt 
upon  Japan  was  by  no  means  a  matter  of 
simplicity  or  one  free  from  peril.  Mr.  Ensor's 
destination  was  Nagasaki,  the  treaty-port  in  the 
island  of  Kiu-Shiu.  It  was  here,  cabined, 
cribbed,  and  confined  to  the  limits  of  the  island 
of  Deshima,  that  the  Dutch,  for  230  years,  had 
conducted  that  trade  with  Japan  which  was  the 
only  link — saving  an  annual  junk  from  China — 
between  the  outside  world  and  the  self-contained 
Land  of  the  Rising  Sun.  Mr.  Ensor's  first  view 
of  the  shore  showed  him  the  singular  beauty  of  the 
country,  but  reminded  him  also  that  Christianity 
was  a  perilous  thing  to  profess.  For  there 
before  him  frowned  at  the  entrance  of  the  bay 
the  rock  Pappenberg,  from  whose  summit  it 
is  generally  believed  that  they  hurled  many  of 
the  Christians  crushed  in  the  last  rising  of  1637. 
What  was  possible  in  a  land  which  had  shown 
the  marvellous  resolution  evidenced,  both  in 
nearly  three  centuries  of  exclusiveness,  and  in  a 
war  of  extermination  against  the  professors  of  a 
faith  it  had  learned  to  distrust  ? 


THE  PIONEER  IN  JAPAN  37 

Scarcely  was  he  settled  before  he  was  granted 
another  reminder  of  the  antagonism  to  Christianity. 
Past  his  door  were  driven  hundreds  of  Romanists, 
forming  nearly  the  whole  population  of  a  village 
near  Nagasaki,  who,  under  the  laws  against 
Christianity,  were  torn  from  their  homes  and 
sent  into  banishment.  The  Roman  Catholic 
accounts  represent  them  as  suffering  the  cruellest 
treatment ;  and,  although  the  result  of  Sir  Harry 
Parkes's  inquiries  would  seem  to  show  that 
there  was  some  exaggeration  in  these,  Mr.  Ensor 
is  witness  that  their  condition  and  experiences 
excited  the  strongest  commiseration. 

There  was  already  one  Protestant  missionary, 
representing  an  American  Society,  settled  in 
Nagasaki ;  but  his  presence,  if  to  some  extent 
reassuring,  did  not  tell  Mr.  Ensor  that  the 
ordinary  methods  of  evangelisation  were  avail- 
able. The  laws  made  it  impossible  to  open  a 
small  preaching-place,  or  to  collect  hearers  in  the 
open  air,  or  to  invite  the  children  to  a  school. 
To  sit  at  home  and  await  inquiries,  that,  of 
course,  was  possible.  But  would  not  such  a 
poHcy  be  an  invitation  of  the  mountain  to  come 
to    Mohammed  ?     So   it    might    reasonably  have 


38  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

seemed ;  but  so  in  reality  it  was  not.  The  spirit 
of  inquiry  was  abroad,  and  included  religion 
within  its  scope.  It  may  be  that  there  was,  in 
many  instances,  no  strong  spiritual  craving  at 
the  root  of  these  inquiries.  It  was  the  great 
West  of  which  the  keen-witted  Japanese  wished 
to  talk,  and  it  was  impossible  for  them  to  ignore 
her  religion  either  as  a  matter  of  interest  by 
itself,  or  in  relation  to  its  influence  upon  learning, 
art,  and  social  life. 

But  the  man  who  ventured  to  ask  about 
Christianity  might  be  discerned  by  the  greater 
caution  of  his  approach.  It  came  to  Mr.  Ensor's 
ears  that  the  Government  had  stationed  a  watch 
at  his  gate.  The  precaution  would  doubtless  be 
known  to  the  public,  and  would  suggest  measures 
of  self-protection  to  any  who  wished  to  know 
something  of  that  evil  sect  called  Christian. 

When  from  his  dwelling  Mr.  Ensor  looked  out 
into  the  gloom  of  night,  it  was  at  least  trying  to 
be  uncertain  as  to  the  intentions  of  the  figures 
cautiously  approaching  his  door.  They  might  be 
emissaries  of  the  Government ;  they  might  be 
fanatics  bent  on  removing  a  teacher  of  the  long- 
condemned  faith ;  they  might  be  more  of  those 


THE  PIONEER  IN  JAPAN  39 

visitors  who — polite,  voluble,  full  of  eager 
curiosity — had  hour  by  hour  flocked  to  him  for 
news  of  great  England  across  the  sea.  For  long 
he  lay  down  at  night  deeming  it  quite  possible 
that  a  violent  death  might  be  his  before  morning. 
But  every  hour  of  the  day  brought  its  own 
anxiety,  whilst  success  in  the  work  promised 
even  more  peril  than  failure. 

When  under  the  cover  of  night  the  cautious 
inquirer  had  reached  Mr.  Ensor's  presence,  it 
was  well  to  think  of  his  safety.  The  doors  wxre 
closed,  the  windows  barred ;  then  teacher  and 
learner  sat  in  converse  till  startled  by  another 
knock.  Was  this  the  summons  of  friend  or  of 
foe  ?  For  the  most  part  it  was  another  inquirer, 
who  could  only  be  talked  with  when  the  first 
was  gone.  When  they  parted,  it  was  with  the 
parting  of  men  who  felt  that  each  had  placed  his 
life  in  the  other's  hands. 

Soon  definite  encouragement  cheered  the 
pioneer.  In  the  very  week  that  Mr.  Ensor  saw  the 
Urakami  Christians  being  driven  into  exile,  there 
came  to  him,  under  the  shadow  of  night,  one 
who  was  something  more  than  a  mere  inquirer. 
When  the  knock  was  answered  Mr.  Ensor  found 


40  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 


an  armed  Japanese  at  the  door.  Beckoned  in, 
and  asked  to  explain  his  wishes,  the  visitor  said  : 
''A  few  days  ago  I  had  a  copy  of  the  Bible  in 
my  hands,  and  I  wish  to  be  a  Christian." 

The  statement  was  astonishing.  Could  the 
man  be  bent  on  some  malicious  purpose  ? 

''Are  you  a  stranger  in  these  parts  ?"  asked 
Mr.  Ensor.  "  Don't  you  know  that  thousands  of 
the  people  are  being  detained  as  prisoners  for 
this  ?  " 

''  Yes,"  said  the  man,  ''  I  know.  Last  night 
I  came  to  your  gate,  and  as  I  stood  there, 
thinking  of  the  danger  of  the  step  I  was  about 
to  take,  fear  overpowered  me  and  I  returned. 
But  there  stood  by  me  in  the  night  one  who  came 
to  me  in  my  dreams,  and  said  I  was  to  go  to  the 
house  of  the  missionary,  and  nothing  would 
happen  to  me ;  and  I  have  come." 

Then  the  stranger  drew  his  sword,  and  on  it 
swore,  by  a  Japanese  oath,  that  he  would  be  true 
to  his  teacher. 

This  man  was  one  of  the  first  of  Mr.  Ensor's 
converts.  With  his  baptism  began  the  building 
of  a  native  church,  which  may  now  be  said  to 
represent    a    national    rather    than    an    external 


THE  PIONEER  IN  JAPAN  41 

organisation.  That  convert  was  received  in  the 
winter  of  1870.  The  statistics  of  the  Japan 
mission  of  the  Church  Missionary  Society,  as 
stated  in  the  report  for  the  year  1892-93,  show 
that  the  adherents  numbered  2457,  with  no  fewer 
than  80  ordained  and  lay  native  workers. 

The  advance  has  everywhere  been  steady  and 
hopeful.  Indeed,  within  fifteen  years  of  that 
baptism  thoughtful  Japanese  had  begun  to  dis- 
cuss the  desirability  of  making  Christianity  the 
national  faith.  Behind  these  suggestions  there 
did  not,  for  the  most  part,  lie  any  personal 
attachment  to  the  faith,  but  only  a  philosophic 
conviction  that  Christianity  was  the  rehgion 
for  a  progressive  nation.  Once  upon  a  time  it 
was  even  proposed  to  baptise  the  Emperor  and 
some  of  the  nobles,  as  a  sign  or  token  that  the 
faith  long  banished  from  Japan  was  now  the 
official  faith  of  the  land.  They  have  resisted 
that  temptation,  and  we  cannot  doubt  the  wisdom 
of  their  resolve.  In  spite  of  a  certain  strenuous 
effort  to  revive  the  power  of  the  old  religions, 
Christianity  is  steadily  making  its  w^ay  through- 
out Japan.  Even  the  old  aboriginal  Ainus  have 
felt  its  force.     It  is  better  that  a  national  Chris- 


42  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

tianity  should  thus  be  reached  step  by  step,  than 
that  the  voice  of  authority  should  recommend  it 
to  the  people.  We  want  and  we  have  toleration ; 
we  do  not  want  patronage,  that  may  prove  the 
fruitful  parent  of  formalism  and  hypocrisy. 


THE  GRAVES  BY  THE  VICTORIA  NYANZA 


THE  GRAVES  BY  THE  VICTORIA  NYANZA 

Uo  mission  of  modern  times  has  won 
more  attention  from  the  outside  public 
than  the  bold  attempt  of  the  Church 
Missionary  Society  to  rear  a  native  Church 
by  the  shores  of  the  Victoria  Nyanza.  Through 
circumstances  over  which  the  missionaries 
themselves  had  no  control,  their  labours 
acquired  a  national  interest.  It  is  not  good 
for  missions  when  they  impinge  upon  the  field 
of  politics.  But  if  that  cannot  be  avoided, 
it  is  all  the  more  important  that  we  should 
have  clearly  in  mind  the  work  of  those  who, 
never  dreaming  of  imperial  interests  casting 
long  shadows  across  their  path,  or  of  poli- 
ticians debating  the  conditions  of  its  continu- 
ance, have  lived  and  died  in  simple  obedience  to 
their  Master's  command. 

In  the  attempt  on  Uganda  they  have  died  in 


46  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

divers  ways — under  the  sudden  assault  of 
natives  before  Europeans  were  familiar  objects  ; 
by  premeditated  murder;  by  fever,  even  before 
they  had  reached  their  goal,  and  before  the 
sound  of  home  farewells  had  quite  died  out  of 
their  ears ;  by  fever,  after  enduring  many 
sorrows,  and  passing  unscathed  through  many 
perils.  The  death-roll  of  the  Uganda  mission, 
counting  those  who  died  on  their  way  up 
from  the  coast,  and  one  whose  enfeebled  frame 
the  heat  of  the  Red  Sea  exhausted,  marks  it 
as  a  mission  of  peculiar  peril.  Perhaps  that  is 
why  recruits  have  never  been  wanting. 

The  native  Church  in  Uganda  is  one  product 
of  what,  for  the  time,  seemed  a  blow  at  mis- 
sionary enterprise.  When,  in  1843,  John 
Ludwig  Krapf,  expelled  from  Abyssinia,  was 
also  expelled  from  Shoa,  a  man  of  less  faith 
and  pertinacity  might  have  argued  that  Africa 
was  closed  against  him.  Not  so  with  him. 
Repelled  there,  he  only  sought  for  another 
opening  into  the  same  continent.  He  sailed 
from  Aden  in  an  Arab  dhow,  and  in  January 
1844  landed  at  Mombasa.  It  was  he  who 
first  heard  of  the  great  inland  sea.     It  was  from 


THE  GRAVES  BY  VICTORIA  NYANZA      47 


his  companions,  Rebmann  and  Erhardt,  that 
the  sketch-map  of  the  great  lake,  which  set 
all  the  geographical  quidnuncs  of  Europe 
a-talking,  came.  It  was  from  this  that 
resulted  the  expedition  of  Burton  and  Speke, 
of  Speke  and  Grant,  the  later  explorations 
of  Livingstone,  and  the  journeys  which  brought 
Mr.  Stanley  to  Uganda.  It  was  from  Mr. 
Stanley's  interview  with  Mtesa  that  sprang 
Mtesa's  appeal,  through  Mr.  Stanley,  for  mis- 
sionary teachers,  in  answer  to  which  the  Church 
Missionary  Society's  Nyanza  mission  was  or- 
ganised. Thus  the  expulsion  from  Abyssinia 
and  Shoa,  so  far  from  throwing  back  the  pro- 
gress of  the  Gospel,  resulted  in  the  standard 
of  the  Cross  being  raised  in  the  very  centre  of 
Equatorial  Africa. 

It  was  on  November  15,  1875,  that  readers 
of  the  Daily  Telegraph  found  in  its  pages  a  letter 
from  Mr.  Stanley,  conveying  Mtesa's  invitation 
for  missionaries.  By  June  26,  1876,  the  mem- 
bers of  the  first  expedition,  prepared  by  the 
Church  Missionary  Society  in  answer  to  that  call, 
were  at  Zanzibar. 

They  were  a   remarkable    band.      The    leader 


48  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

was  Lieutenant  Shergold  Smith.  His  father 
was,  as  a  midshipman,  on  board  the  man-of- 
war  by  which  Crowther,  afterwards  Bishop  of 
the  Niger  Territory,  was  saved  from  the  slave- 
ship  in  1822.  He  himself  had  served  with  dis- 
tinction in  the  Ashanti  war,  but  had  retired  from 
the  Army  in  order  to  enter  the  ministry.  He 
was  the  first  volunteer.  Alexander  Mackay,  the 
young  Scotch  engineer,  a  man  of  Livingstone's 
mould,  was  the  second.  Dr.  John  Smith,  a 
friend  from  Edinburgh,  joined  at  his  request. 
A  Manchester  curate,  the  Rev.  C.  T.  Wilson, 
offered ;  so  did  Mr.  T.  O'Neill,  an  architect  ; 
Mr.  James  Robertson,  a  builder,  from  Newcastle; 
Mr.  G.  J.  Clarke,  an  engineer ;  and  Mr.  W.  M. 
Robertson,  an  artisan.  The  Society's  doctors 
rejected  Mr.  James  Robertson,  wherefore  he  went 
out  with  the  party  at  his  own  charges. 

When  the  Committee  bade  them  farewell, 
Mackay,  the  youngest  of  all,  offered  a  word  of 
warning,  the  gist  of  which  ma}^  be  given 
in  one  of  its  sentences :  ''  I  want  to  remind 
the  Committee  that  within  six  months  they 
will  probably  hear  that  one  of  us  is  dead." 

That   was   in  April   1876.      The  forecast  was 


THE  GRAVES  BY  VICTORIA  NYAXZA        49 

justified.  On  August  5,  the  man  whom  no 
doctors  could  keep  from  the  field,  Mr.  James 
Robertson,  died  at  Zanzibar.  But  although 
the  two  artisans  broke  down,  and  were  sent 
home,  and  although  Mackay  was  for  a  time 
invalided,  the  remnant  struggled  on.  In  January 
1877,  Wilson  and  O'Neill  reached  the  south  end 
of  the  Victoria  Nyanza,  the  borders,  as  it  were, 
of  the  land  they  sought.  And  there  Dr.  John 
Smith  died  in  May.  In  December  of  that  year, 
Shergold  Smith  and  O'Neill  were  murdered  by 
a  native  chief,  to  whose  vengeance  they  refused 
to  surrender  an  Arab  trader  who  sought  their 
protection.  Thus,  of  the  original  band,  Shergold 
Smith,  O'Neill,  Dr.  John  Smith,  and  James 
Robertson  were  dead  ;  W.  Robertson  and  G.  J. 
Clark  had  been  invalided  home ;  Wilson  and 
Mackay  alone  remained.  The  former  was  with 
Mtesa,  in  Uganda,  the  latter  toiling  up  from  the 
coast.  The  first  steps  had  been  costly ;  it 
needed  men  of  faith  and  patience  to  go  on. 

But  recruits  were  coming.  And  of  them  also 
death  at  once  took  toll.  Two  artisans  for 
Uganda  had  landed  at  Zanzibar  in  June  1877, 
but  one  almost  immediately  broke  down,  and  was 

D 


50  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 


sent  home ;  the  other  died  on  the  journey  to  the 
Lake.  It  was  not  until  July  1878,  that  Mackay 
reached  the  south  end  of  the  Victoria  Nyanza. 
Wilson  crossed  from  Mtesa's  to  meet  him, 
and  the  two  were  wrecked  on  their  way  back. 

But  other  recruits  were  coming.  Five,  helped 
by  General  Gordon,  were  travelling  up  the  Nile  ; 
the  others  were  journeying  by  Zanzibar.  Of  this 
latter  party,  one,  Mr.  Penrose,  was  murdered  by 
robbers ;  and  one  from  each  party  had  been 
invalided  home.  Early  in  1 879  there  were,  for  a 
time,  seven  Church  Missionary  Society  mission- 
aries in  Uganda,  but  two  came  home  with  Mtesa's 
envoys  to  the  Queen,  and  two  were  sent  to  Uyui, 
a  station  south  of  the  Lake. 

For  a  little  while  Mtesa  was  friendly,  and 
teaching  possible.  Then  came  more  misfortunes. 
Mr.  Litchfield's  health  compelled  his  departure, 
and  Mackay  saw  him  part  of  the  way  home. 
Mr.  Pearson,  left  alone  in  Uganda,  was  nearly 
starved  to  death.  He  might  have  died,  in  the 
midst  of  plenty,  but  for  gifts  from  some  of  the 
natives.  Hardest  of  all,  teaching  was  forbidden, 
and  a  lad,  who  persisted  that  the  religion  of 
Jesus  was  the  only  true  religion,  was  put  into  the 


THE  GRAVES  BY  VICTORIA  NYANZA       51 

stocks,  and  afterwards  deported  from  the  capital. 
The  solitary  young  worker,  his  life  at  the  mercy 
of  a  fickle  savage,  forbidden  to  tell  his  message, 
getting  protection  by  putting  up  a  flagstaff  for  the 
king,  fed  by  the  gifts  of  people  he  had  doctored, 
and  uncheered  by  ease  of  communication  with 
home,  needed  faith  and  patience  in  no  common 
degree.  He  had  both  ;  for  amidst  it  all  his 
request  for  himself  is  ''  Lord,  clear  the  way  .... 
enable  us  to  light  Thy  candle  in  Uganda,  which 
shall  never  be  put  out." 

Then,  for  a  while,  there  were  better  times. 
Teaching  was  allowed,  hearers  flocked  in, 
converts  were  baptized,  and  Mackay  (who  had 
arrived)  was,  with  a  toy  printing-press,  trying  to 
satisfy  the  demand  for  literature.  By  the  end  of 
1884  there  had  been  eighty-eight  baptisms;  and 
the  mission  staff  was  again  strengthened,  for 
another  party  of  six  had  left  England  in  May 
1882.  Of  those  six,  Hannington  was  murdered 
three  years  later,  under  circumstances  presently 
to  be  described ;  Blackburn  lies  in  God's  acre  at 
Usambiro,  at  the  south  end  of  the  Lake. 

In  1884  Mtesa  died.     His  successor,  Mwanga, 
a    lad    of   eighteen,    was    readily    persuaded    to 


52  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

oppose  the  white  men  and  their  teaching.  The 
next  crisis  in  the  history  of  the  mission  is  soon, 
therefore,  reached.  In  January  1885,  Mackay 
and  Ashe,  travelHng  with  two  native  boys,  were 
stopped  by  a  Mohammedan  chief,  and  marched 
back,  under  guard,  to  the  capital.  Inquiry  as  to 
the  fate  of  the  boys  only  brought  down  further 
violence.  Presents  failed  to  appease  the 
authorities,  and  soon  the  two  missionaries  found 
their  worst  fears  confirmed  ;  for  the  two  lads  and 
another  young  Christian  had  been  burnt  to  death. 
''  Our  hearts  are  breaking,"  wrote  Mackay. 
''All  our  Christians  dispersed  " — they  had  bidden 
them  to  seek  safety  in  flight — "  we  are  lonely  and 
deserted,  sad  and  sick."  But  in  a  day  or  two  he 
is  full  of  hope  once  more,  resolved  that  if  the 
missionaries  are  driven  out,  they  shall  leave 
Christian  literature  behind  them.  In  the  same 
spirit,  when  Mwanga  protested  that  the  boys  had 
been  martyred  without  his  knowledge,  Mackay 
boldly  told  the  tyrant  that  he  had  "  committed  a 
great  sin  against  God  in  murdering  innocent 
boys."  It  was  a  crisis  to  try  the  stoutest  heart. 
Death  might  come  at  any  moment ;  and  at  the 
time    of    gravest    peril    the    mission    boat   was 


THE  GRAVES  BY  VICTORIA  NYANZA       53 

swamped.      Little   wonder    that    the    prolonged 
strain  laid  O'Flaherty  aside  with  fever. 

That  crisis  passed.  There  came  a  little  season 
of  prosperity  again,  when  Mackay  could  freely 
admonish  the  king.  But  even  whilst  he  thus 
leant  one  ear  to  instruction,  Mwanga  gave  his 
head  executioner  liberty  to  slay  as  he  pleased. 
It  was  obvious  that  the  infant  Church  was  but 
enjoying  a  respite.  Sooner  or  later  the  blow 
would  fall,  and  who  would  survive  it  ?  It  fell 
first,  not  upon  the  party  in  Uganda,  but  upon  one 
coming,  as  Mackay  hoped,  to  its  succour. 

James  Hannington,  driven  back  to  England  in 
1883,  had  resolved  to  return  in  the  following 
year.  It  was  decided  that  he  should  go  out  as 
first  Bishop  of  Eastern  Equatorial  Africa.  He 
was  consecrated,  and  reached  his  diocese  in  1884. 
In  the  following  year  he  started  for  Uganda. 
Along  the  old  route,  to  the  south  end  of  the  Lake, 
the  missionary  parties  had  suffered  so  severely 
from  the  exactions  of  tribute-asking  chiefs,  that 
Hannington  resolved  to  strike  out  a  new  line, 
through  Masailand,  to  the  north  end  of  the  Lake. 
The  peril  from  the  then  all-powerful  Masai  was 
deemed  so  great  that  every  effort  was  used  to 


54  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

move  Hannington  from  his  resolve ;  but  he 
believed  the  need  of  a  new  road  to  be  so  urgent 
that  he  resolved  to  face  the  perils.  Through  the 
perils  predicted  he  passed  in  safety ;  danger 
and  death  came  from  an  unlooked-for  quarter. 

Mwanga  lay  in  dread  of  Europeans  seeking  to 
"  eat  up  "  his  country.  When  some  of  his  raiders 
brought  news  from  Busoga  that  '^  there  were  two 
white  men  there,  and  some  more  behind  with 
a  great  caravan,"  he  seems  to  have  felt  that  the 
flood  was  pouring  in.  To  the  three  watchers  in 
Uganda  there  was  presently  borne  word  that  the 
stranger  was,  as  they  feared,  their  Bishop,  and 
that  he  was  already  in  the  stocks.  Then  followed 
long  hours  of  agony  as  they  waited  for  news. 

At  last  it  came.  Hannington  was  dead. 
To  us  now  his  own  journals  tell  almost  of  all 
save  the  very  last  scene.  He  was  led  to 
execution,  singing,  after  the  pattern  of  many 
other  martyrs,  hymns  in  which  men  caught  the 
name  of  Jesus.  The  story  of  his  life  and  death 
has  been  told  by  a  friend,  and  has  inspired  a 
work  by  a  master-hand  in  fiction.  His  example 
has  borne  much  fruit,  and  may  bear  still  more 
for  the  profit  of  Africa. 


THE  GRAVES  BY  VICTORIA  NYANZA       55 

Hannington  was  slain  on  October  29,  1885. 
It  is  characteristic  of  the  mission,  and  the  men 
who  worked  it,  that  on  this  day  Mackay  and 
Ashe,  having  sent  their  native  helpers  into 
hiding,  spent  the  time,  one  in  revising  his  trans- 
lation of  St.  Matthew,  the  other  in  putting  it  into 
type.  If  they  were  to  die  they  would  at  least 
leave  the  witness  behind  them.  Within  a  week 
of  Hannington's  death  there  were  five  more 
baptisms.  Inquirers  pressed  in  ;  whilst  Mwanga 
swung  from  praise  to  anger,  from  applause  to 
threats  of  death,  from  fears  of  the  missionary's 
power  to  the  burning  of  the  converts. 

The  storm  soon  burst.  On  May  25,  1886, 
an  order  went  forth  for  the  arrest  of  all  the 
Christians.  At  least  eleven  converts  were  killed 
that  day ;  shortly  afterwards  thirty-two  were 
burnt  alive,  ''  calling  on  God."  Yet  even  so,  the 
Church  prospered,  and  inquirers  grew  bolder. 
The  impotence  of  persecution  struck  even  the 
native  chiefs,  and  the  king's  proposal  to  kill 
Mackay  met  with  no  countenance.  But  to  have 
lived  through  those  months  of  agony  was  surely 
to  have  compressed  the  sorrows  of  a  lifetime.  In 
August  1886,  Mr.  Ashe  at  last  obtained  leave  to 


50  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

quit  Uganda,  and  the  heroic   Mackay  was  for  a 
while  left  to  face  the  situation  alone. 

There  was  no  lack  of  work  for  him  to  do,  for 
still,  as    evening   fell,  the    people  came.     ''  Late, 
late,   often   very  late,  we  wound  up,  and   I  was 
often    more    than    exhausted — reading,    teaching, 
drudging,    etc." — one   man    a   light  to  a   nation. 
And  this  amidst  alarms  and  threats,  when  again 
there    were    deaths    and    escapes    from    death. 
Amongst      the      escapes      was      that    of     Mika 
Sematimba,  then  an   officer  in  the  king's  body- 
guard, who,  at  the  end  of  1892,  came  to  England 
with     the     Rev.     R.     H.     Walker.       Opposition 
increased  once  more.     Mohammedan  slavers  dili- 
gently worked  to  secure  the  death  or  expulsion  of 
Mackay  ;  and  even  the  French  missionaries  seem 
to  have  welcomed  the  prospect  of  his  dismissal. 
It  was  hard  to  leave  ;    but   at  last  he  judged  it 
best  ''to  bend    before   the  storm."     In    August, 
1887,  he  reached  the  south  end  of  the  Lake,  and 
ultimately  fixed  his  home  at  Usambiro. 

Yet  Uganda  was  left  but  for  a  very  little  while 
without  an  English  occupant.  Mackay's  place 
was  almost  at  once  taken  by  the  Rev.  E.  C. 
Gordon,  a  nephew  of  the  murdered  Hannington, 


THE  GRAVES  BY  VICTORIA  NYANZA       57 

a  recruit  from  a  quiet  clerical  home  in  Yorkshire, 
by  the  shores  of  the  North  Sea.  And  other 
helpers  might  be  hoped  for,  since  the  new  bishop, 
Henry  Perrott  Parker,  with  Mr.  Ashe  and  others, 
would  shortly  reach  Usambiro.  They  came,  and 
one  of  the  party,  the  Rev.  R.  H.  Walker,  went  on 
to  Uganda. 

But  death  was  again  to  be  busy  with  the 
mission.  On  the  very  day,  in  May  1888,  when 
the  Church  Missionary  Society  was  keeping  its 
anniversary  at  Exeter  Hall,  came  news  that  the 
bishop  and  Mr.  Blackburn  were  both  dead. 
Fever  took  them  both,  and  they  were  buried  at 
Usambiro.  The  loss  of  Bishop  Parker  was  a 
heavy  one  to  the  mission.  Already  it  had  had 
two  bishops,  and  neither  of  them  had  survived 
the  attempt  to  reach  Uganda.  Yet  lest  the  men 
should  be  overmuch  cast  down  at  this  new 
discipline,  great  encouragement  came  to  the 
mission.  Mwanga  watched  in  vain  for  some  of 
the  Christian  natives  whom  he  sought  to  kill. 
Two  of  them  ventured  out  of  hiding  and  boldly 
helped  in  the  work  of  teaching,  but  had  once 
more  to  flee.  Mr.  Gordon,  the  solitary  watcher 
in  Uganda,  was  strengthened  by  the  arrival,  in 


58  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 


April  1888,  of  the  Rev.  R.  H.  Walker.  Before 
these  two  there  lay  trials  only  less  severe  than 
those  which  fell  on  Mackay  and  Ashe. 

Mwanga  devised  an  ingenious  plan  for  ex- 
terminating the  ''readers"  by  starving  them  to 
death  on  an  island.  They  suspected  his  motive 
just  in  time,  and  his  plot  hastened  their  decision 
to  rise  against  him.  Quietly  and  without  loss  of 
life  he  was  deposed,  and  left  the  country.  For  a 
while  all  went  well.  Then  the  Mohammedans 
planned  another  rising,  and  for  a  time  succeeded. 
Messrs.  Walker  and  Gordon,  with  the  French 
missionaries,  were  at  their  mercy.  Happily, 
though  they  robbed  them  with  cruel  complete- 
ness, they  stopped  short  of  murder.  With  little 
or  no  provision  the  white  men  were  put  on  board 
the  Church  Missionary  Society's  boat  and  left  to 
the  tender  mercies  of  the  great  lake.  A  hippo- 
potamus capsized  the  boat,  but  happily  near  the 
land.  Five  native  boys  were  drowned  ;  but  the 
white  men  escaped,  and  Mr.  Walker  patched  up 
tlie  leak  as  best  he  could.  ''  I  confess,"  he  says, 
"  I  felt  bad  as  we  rowed  away  from  shore,  miles 
away  from  land,  thirty-four  souls  on  board,  and 
only  a  pad  of  tow  and  dripping  to  keep  the  water 


THE  GRAVES  BY  VICTORIA  NYANZA       59 

out."  Seventeen  days  of  such  an  experience  were 
enough  to  try  the  stoutest  heart.  And  not  so 
many  months  before  Mr.  Walker  had  been  curate 
of  All  Souls',  Langham  Place — a  sufficiently 
striking  contrast. 

After  a  while  another  revolution  placed  the 
Christians  again  in  power,  and  back  with  them 
went  the  young  pair,  Gordon  and  Walker.  Upon 
the  Christian  subjects  whom  he  had  so  long 
persecuted  Mwanga  had  now  to  rely,  and  for 
a  time  he  was  fully  sensible  of  their  use  to  him. 
It  was  during  the  perils  which  succeeded  his 
return  to  power  that  Mwanga  and  the  Christian 
party  sought  help  from  the  representatives  of  the 
British  East  Africa  Company.  In  these  and 
subsequent  negotiations  the  missionaries  shared, 
but  only  as  interpreters  or  agents,  and  not 
as  leaders  or  persons  of  authority. 

Only  two  scenes  in  the  chequered  recent 
history  of  the  mission  need  here  be  noticed.  In 
February  1890,  the  heroic  Mackay  died  of  fever 
at  Usambiro,  and  was  laid  in  the  little  graveyard, 
near  his  bishop.  He  had  refused  to  come  home, 
but  sent  instead  repeated  calls  for  reinforcements. 
Mackay's  career  touched  the  public  imagination 


6o  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 


more  than  that  of  any  missionary  since  the  death 
of  Livingstone.  His  patience,  his  faith,  his 
many-sided  usefidness,  all  appealed  to  a  wider 
circle  than  those  immediately  concerned  in  mis- 
sionary enterprise. 

In  April  1890,  Bishop  Tucker  was  conse- 
crated, and  two  bands  of  recruits  went  at  once 
out  to  the  field.  The  history  of  the  second  little 
band  is  worthy  of  notice.  The  group  preceding  it 
lost  one  member  almost  as  soon  as  it  reached  the 
coast.  A  telegram  then  asked  for  further  help. 
It  came  on  May  5th,  as  the  Society  was  begin- 
ning its  anniversary,  and  the  contents  were  made 
known.  The  volunteers  must  be  ready  to  start  at 
once.  By  ten  the  next  morning,  four  offered ;  by 
the  next  evening,  five  more;  and  on  May  loth 
the  chosen  four  sailed.  Of  these  four  one  died  in 
two  months,  one  in  the  November  of  that  year, 
and  one  in  April  1892. 

Yet  recruits  have  not  been  wanting  to  fill  these 

places.     Is  there  not  heroism  in    the    faith    and 

the  patience    of   the  men    who   have    so   calmly 

persevered — 

"  Each  stepping  where  his  comrade  stood 
The  instant  that  he  fell  "  ? 


A  PIONEER  IN  THE  FAR  WEST 


A  PIONEER  IN  THE  FAR  WEST 

/^te  N  1845  3.  boy  named  John  Horden  was 
jl  elected  to  the  school  of  St.  John's  Hos- 
pital, Exeter.  Into  his  hands  one  day 
there  fell  a  book  which  described  in  graphic  terms 
the  horrors  of  heathendom  in  India.  That  book 
decided  the  character  of  the  boy's  life.  From  the 
day  he  read  it  his  desire  was  to  be  a  missionary. 
Now  in  the  thirties  and  forties  (and  even  much 
later)  the  missionary  calling  was  viewed  in  a  very 
different  way  from  what  it  is  now.  The  Christian 
Church  was  far  from  enthusiastic  in  its  support 
of  missions  ;  the  general  public  viewed  them  with 
ill-concealed  contempt ;  the  secular  press  roundly 
condemned  and  derided  both  the  work  and  the 
workers.  Little  surprise  need  therefore  be  felt  at 
John  Horden's  wish  finding  no  favour  with  his 
friends. 

But  opposition  is  not  always  a  bad  thing.     In 


64  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

the  case  of  John  Horden  it  conduced  in  a  very 
striking  way  to  his  ultimate  success  in  the  mission- 
field.  For  on  leaving  school  he  learned  a  trade, 
and  that  was  one  advantage  in  the  years  to 
come.  Then  he  became  a  schoolmaster,  and  in 
struggling  with  the  problems  that  beset  every 
thoughtful  teacher,  he  gained  another  store  of 
experience  for  the  great  work  of  his  life.  Nor 
was  he  ever  forgetful  of  the  mission-field.  At 
Exeter  he  was  for  some  years  one  of  a  band 
of  young  men  who  met  regularly  to  read  the 
Bible  and  keep  themselves  informed  of  mis- 
sionary work.  Of  that  company  two  became 
missionaries  of  the  Society  for  the  Propagation 
of  the  Gospel,  and  four  of  the  Church  Missionary 
Society. 

In  his  twenty-third  year  the  old  longing 
for  work  in  the  mission-field  came  upon  Horden 
with  overwhelming  force.  This  time  he  was  able 
to  take  the  definite  step  of  offering  himself  to  the 
Church  Missionary  Society,  and  by  it  he  was  in 
the  latter  part  of  1850  accepted  for  training.  If 
the  schoolboy  aspirations  of  young  John  Horden 
had  been  at  once  recognised  by  his  friends  he 
could  hardly  have  been  sent  out  at  an  earlier  age ; 


A  PIONEER  IN  THE  FAR   WEST  65 

nor  could  his  prior  training  have  been  of  a  more 
useful  character. 

It  was  to  India  that  Horden's  thoughts  had 
turned  as  a  boy,  and  on  India  his  hopes  were 
fixed  when  he  offered  himself  to  the  Church 
Missionary  Society.  To  India,  also,  he  would 
probably  have  gone  but  for  another  of  those  inter- 
positions which  are  so  prominent  in  his  life. 

In  May  185 1,  when  the  minds  of  people  at 
home  were  occupied  with  thoughts  of  the  Great 
Exhibition  in  Hyde  Park,  there  came  to  the 
Church  Missionary  Society  House  news  that  the 
Wesleyans  were  about  to  withdraw  from  a  mis- 
sionary post  they  had  held  at  Moose  Factory,  in 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Territory.  It  was  in  the 
highest  degree  important,  in  the  opinion  of 
those  who  knew  the  Indians  and  their  needs,  that 
this  post  should  not  be  given  up,  and  the  Church 
Missionary  Society  Committee  lent  a  willing  ear 
to  the  appeal.  But  who  could  go  out  ?  Horden's 
offer  and  his  quaHfications  were  remembered  ;  he 
was  telegraphed  for,  and  the  Committee's  need 
laid  before  him.  He  had  thought  of  India ;  this 
pointed  to  America.  He  had  dreamed  of  crowded 
cities  and  thronging  thousands  amongst  whom  to 


66  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

do  the  work  of  an  evangelist ;  he  was  shown 
a  few  Indians  whose  surroundings  suggested 
neither  romance  nor  excitement. 

But  Horden's  wish  to  be  a  missionary  was  no 
sentimental  affection  born  of  picturesque  descrip- 
tion or  touching  appeal.  He  meant  work,  and  he 
was  willing  to  be  guided.  Without  hesitation  he 
accepted  the  Committee's  suggestion.  They  asked 
when  he  could  be  ready  ;  his  answer  was,  ''  With- 
in a  week."  This  was  late  in  May.  There  was 
no  time  to  be  lost,  for  only  one  ship  a  year  went 
to  the  Bay,  and  it  was  desirable  that  the  mis- 
sionary should  sail  at  once.  So  great,  too,  was 
the  isolation,  that  he  was  advised  to  take  a  wife 
with  him.  Horden  had  no  impediment  to  allege. 
He  was  engaged  to  a  young  lady  like-minded  with 
himself,  and  he  went  down  to  Devonshire  to  be 
married  at  once.  Two  days  later  the  young 
people  came  up  to  London,  and  on  June  ist  they 
sailed  in  the  annual  ship  for  Moose.  Early  in 
May,  Horden  had  been  plodding  quietly  along  at 
his  work  in  Devonshire  ;  at  the  end  of  August  he 
was  a  married  missionary  with  a  congregation  on 
the  shores  of  Hudson's  Bay. 

A  glance  at  the  map  of  North  America  shows 


A   PIONEER  IN  THE  FAR   WEST  67 

us  a  southern  prolongation  of  Hudson's  Bay,  to 
which  the  name  of  James  Bay  is  given.  At  its 
extreme  south,  and  a  few  miles  up  a  river,  lies 
Moose  Fort  or  Moose  Factor}'.  It  owes  its  exist- 
ence to  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company,  whose 
officers  and  servants  form  a  small  European 
population.  From  a  missionary  point  of  view 
the  advantage  of  Moose  consisted  not  merely  in 
its  being  the  headquarters  of  the  Company's 
operations,  and  so  enjoying  some  means  of  com- 
munication— though  at  very  rare  intervals — with 
the  outside  world,  but  in  its  commanding,  as  it 
were,  the  vast  desolate  regions  lying  along  the 
eastern  and  western  shores  of  the  Bay. 

The  people  amongst  whom  John  Horden  was 
to  become  a  power  belonged  to  more  than  one 
race.  In  the  north,  on  either  side  of  the  bay, 
were  the  Esquimaux,  the  first  of  the  natives  to  be 
met  on  his  voyage.  The  Chipwyans  were  neigh- 
bours of  the  Esquimaux  on  the  western  side.  To 
the  south  of  these  on  the  one  side  were  the 
Esquimaux,  on  the  other  were  the  Crees.  The 
rest  of  the  interior  the  Ojibbeways  filled. 

It  was  a  vast  parish,  and  although  at  first 
Horden's  labours  were  local,  they  extended  until, 


68  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

as  bishop,  he  overlooked  and  directed  mission- 
stations  on  both  shores  of  the  bay,  from  Fort 
Churchill  on  the  one  side  to  Little  Whale  River 
on  the  other.  On  the  map  the  vastness  of  the 
distances  to  be  traversed  does  not  strike  us, 
although  a  diocese  1,500  miles  from  north  to 
south  and  east  to  west,  a  diocese  with  some  3,000 
miles  of  rocky  coast,  is  ample  enough.  But  let 
the  conditions  of  travel  be  thoroughly  under- 
stood. 

To  reach  Moose  by  ship  is  a  perilous  voyage,  in 
which  the  struggle  with  shoals,  rocks,  and  ice- 
bergs has  to  be  conducted  with  the  utmost  caution 
during  the  few  short  months  that  navigation  is 
possible  at  all.  Upon  land  there  are  no  roads, 
but  in  summer  the  interior  is  traversed  on  its 
waterways  by  long  and  perilous  voyages  in  the 
birch-bark  canoe.  In  the  winter,  from  October 
to  May,  the  dog-drawn  carriole  or  the  snow-shoe 
is  the  only  means  available.  From  England 
news  and  stores  came  once  a  year ;  with  other 
parts  of  the  mission-field  there  was  also  some 
communication.  But  so  great  are  the  difficulties 
that,  when  the  outgoing  ship  was  one  year  de- 
tained   by   ice    in    the    bay,    the    news    reached 


A  PIONEER  IN  THE  FAR  WEST  69 

England  before  it  was  known  at  Albany,  a  hun- 
dred miles  from  Moose. 

Such  were  the  conditions  of  life  into  which  the 
young  Devonshire  schoolmaster  was  suddenly 
thrown.  ''  This  is,  indeed,  a  day  of  hope,  a  day 
of  great  thanksgiving,"  he  wrote  in  his  diary  on 
landing;  and,  in  this  hopeful,  buoyant  spirit, 
which  marked  all  his  life,  he  at  once  began  work. 

There  were  two  very  obvious  advantages  :  the 
presence  and  sympathy  of  a  few  Europeans,  and 
the  existence  of  a  Christian  congregation.  The 
Indians  were  only  too  thankful  that  a  missionary 
was  with  them  once  more.  Horden  at  once 
applied  himself  to  the  study  of  the  language,  and 
his  remarkable  success  was  due  not  less  to  his 
industry  than  to  his  ingenuity  of  method.  He 
believed  in  the  advantages  possessed  by  a  ''  house- 
going  parson,"  and  was  much  in  the  Indians'  tents. 
There  he  laboriously  copied  out  the  conversations 
he  heard,  obtained  translations,  and  carefully 
puzzled  out  the  relation  of  the  two.  His  success 
was  so  rapid  that  when  he  had  been  a  year  in  the 
work  he  was  an  accomplished  linguist,  able  not  only 
to  talk  with  the  people,  but  also  to  conduct  services 
and  preach  in  the  vernacular.     Almost  on  landing 


70  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

he  aspired  after  a  printing-press,  b}''  which  he 
could  give  the  people  reading  matter;  and  he 
soon  began  that  translational  woi-k  which  will,  in 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Territory,  be  a  lasting  memorial 
of  John  Horden. 

In  1852,  the  summer  after  Ilorden's  landing, 
there  came  a  visitor  to  Moose.  It  was  the  Bishop 
of  Rupertsland,  who  had  journe3^ed  1,500  miles 
to  visit  this  outlying  station  of  the  then  undivided 
diocese.  His  original  plan  had  been  to  establish 
at  Moose  a  young  clergyman  whose  arrival  was 
expected,  and  to  take  Horden  back  to  the  Red 
River,  where  his  preparation  for  holy  orders 
might  go  on  under  the  Bishop's  eye.  But  instead 
of  a  raw  young  missionary  still  struggling  with 
the  first  difficulties  of  new  and  solitary  work,  he 
found  one  already  an  expert.  Plorden  had  won 
the  hearts  of  the  Indians.  In  the  midst  of  answer- 
ing the  Bishop's  questions  as  to  their  souls'  health, 
they  would  break  off  to  ask  anxiously  if  Mr. 
Horden  was  to  leave  them.  ''  He  has  their  hearts 
and  affections,"  the  Bishop  wrote  in  his  diary. 
Moreover,  the  young  schoolmaster  had  shown 
extraordinary  aptitude  for  language.  ''  I  looked 
over  Mr.  Horden's  books  in  the  syllabic  character, 


A   PIONEER  IX  THE  FAR   WEST  71 

and  was  astonished  at  what  he  had  accompHshed 
in  so  short  a  time."  The  Crees  used  a  language 
which  Hordcn  could  speak  and  his  Bishop  could 
not.  The  young  people  were  learned  in  a  kind 
of  Shorter  Catechism  which  Horden  had  written 
in  their  own  tongue.  He  had  shown  no  less 
conspicuous  readiness  in  adapting  himself  to  the 
new  conditions  of  life.  Clearly  he  was  the  man 
for  that  mission.  The  Bishop  saw  his  way 
through  the  difficulty.  He  examined  Horden, 
ordained  him  deacon  and  priest  in  the  little  church 
at  Moose,  and  arranged  that  the  clergyman  at 
first  destined  for  that  station  should  take  up 
another.  To  the  last,  Moose,  his  first  home  in  the 
field,  remained  Horden's  headquarters. 

The  hardships  of  life  in  the  Far  West  were 
early  impressed  on  the  3'oung  missionary.  In 
1854  he  had  to  battle  with  starvation  amongst 
his  flock — a  contest  repeated  again  and  again. 
Some,  he  learned,  were  driven  to  cannibalism, 
and  it  was  one  of  the  greatest  joys  of  his  life  to 
see  a  notable  offender,  weaned  from  heathenism, 
become  a  patient,  consistent  Christian.  But 
success  was  early  given,  and  after  only  eleven 
years  of  work,  he  estimated  that   1,800  Indians  in 


72  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

his  district  were  either  baptized  or  waiting  for 
baptism. 

I  do  not  propose  to  tell  in  detail  the  story  of 
Horden's  work.  He  was  consecrated  first  Bishop 
of  Moosonee  in  1872;  he  died  suddenly  in 
January  1893,  amongst  his  own  people.  He 
went  as  the  one  missionary  on  all  the  shores  of 
the  great  bay ;  he  left  it  dotted  with  mission- 
stations.  He  began  with  a  few  Christian 
Indians ;  he  lived  to  see  heathenism  renounced 
by  almost  all,  and  many  of  the  Esquimaux  also 
reached. 

But  despite  Selwyn  and  Patteson,  and  Han- 
nington  and  Valpy  French,  a  bishop  is  some- 
times deemed  to  have  an  easy  life.  Let  us  see 
how  Horden  fared.  No  one  ever  said  less  of  his 
own  hardships  than  he ;  yet  they  were  stern 
enough.  In  common  with  the  Europeans  and 
natives,  the  missionary  was  largely  dependent 
for  food  and  clothing  and  the  few  simple  comforts 
of  life  in  the  Far  West  upon  the  arrival  of  the 
annual  ship.  Every  year  the  anxiety  was  great 
as  its  time  drew  near,  and  equally  great  the  joy 
on  the  ship's  appearance.  Every  year,  too, 
much  depended  on  the  coming  of  the  geese,  for, 


A   PIONEER  IN  THE  FAR   WEST  73 

salted  down,  they  supplied  food  for  many  months. 
Want  and  starvation  were  familiar  in  most 
winters ;  epidemics  scarcely  less  common. 

Horden's  letters  show  us  a  many-sided  life. 
Now  he  is  meeting  the  Indians  as  they  bring  in 
their  furs,  hearing  of  their  sorrow^s  and  joys 
since  last  they  met,  reproving,  rebuking,  ex- 
horting. Anon  he  is  by  the  bedside  of  a  dying 
Christian,  hearing  such  words  of  faith,  and  peace, 
and  thankfulness,  as  repay  a  life  of  toil. 
Presently  he  is  planning  a  tour  of  1,500  or  2,000 
miles,  when  "  his  lordship "  will  sleep  a  good 
deal  in  the  open,  and  fare  as  the  Indians  do. 
Then  he  is  nursing  the  sick  and  restoring  hope 
in  the  face  of  an  epidemic  which  has  taken 
courage  as  well  as  strength  from  all.  Again,  he 
is  going  steadily  over  his  translation  of  the  Bible, 
that  he  may  leave  it  as  perfect  as  possible  before 
he  is  called  away.  He  is  a  bishop,  but  he  can 
*'  knit  as  well  as  any  old  woman,"  manage  a 
birch-bark  canoe,  turn  the  legs  for  a  table,  help 
the  smith  at  the  forge,  cook  his  own  dinner, 
compose  the  hymns  for  an  ordination  servdce,  put 
them  into  type,  and  print  them  for  his  people. 
Of   complaint — save   that  he  cannot  get  all   the 


74  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

help  he  wants  for  the  mission — there  is  none  ;  of 
thankfuhiess  and  contentment  much. 

Writing  less  than  twelve  months  before  his 
death,  he  said  :  '^  As  far  as  postal  communication 
is  concerned,  we  do  not,  as  the  years  roll  on, 
get  any  nearer  to  the  outside  world ;  we  are  still 
buried  in  the  interminable  forest,  the  door  of  our 
grave  being  opened  but  seldom.  We  should 
like  it  to  be  different,  but  we  know  it  is  no  good 
repining.  Like  almost  everything  else,  this  has 
its  bright  as  well  as  its  dark  side  ;  we  have  no 
distractions,  our  work  goes  on  continuously,  our 
minds  become  fully  absorbed  by  our  sur- 
roundings, and  I  doubt  there  being  many  happier 
communities  than  the  one  to  be  found  where  the 
hand  of  God  has  placed  me ;  the  wheels  of  our 
little  society  move  smoothly,  and,  with  God  in 
our  midst,  we  envy  none  the  advantages  they 
possess,  and  are  contented  with  our  own  diminu- 
tive world." 

Writing  home  in  June  1884,  the  Bishop  gave 
a  picturesque  account  of  a  five-days'  journey 
inland  to  a  station,  Long  Portage  House,  up  the 
Moose  River.  Though  in  the  month  of  June, 
the    weather    was    cold ;    there    was    rain    and 


A  PIONEER  IN  THE  FAR  WEST  75 

snow,  and  a  long  canoe  vo3^age  was  no  child's 
play. 

"  Painfully  poling  or  tracking-up  "  the  canoe  in 
the  various  rapids,  or  paddling  between  banks 
heaped  to  thirty  feet  high  with  blocks  of  ice, 
camping  out  at  night,  ''  his  lordship "  sped  on, 
that  at  the  end  of  the  journey  he  might  minister 
at  the  most  to  a  handful  of  people.  They 
gathered,  when  he  came,  in  the  trader's  sitting- 
room,  and  then,  when  the  baptisms,  the  con- 
firmations, and  the  other  services  were  over,  the 
Bishop  set  off  once  more  for  Moose.  In  the  five 
days'  journeying  out  they  had  met  but  one  family  ; 
on  the  way  back  they  came  upon  a  body  of  Indians. 
There  was  a  halt  at  once  ;  a  service  of  three  hours' 
duration  was  begun  upon  the  spot ;  and  then  the 
Bishop's  little  band  went  into  camp  at  10.30  p.m., 
to  be  up  and  in  the  canoes  again  at  four. 

In  September  of  the  same  year  he  describes 
a  lake  journey  upon  a  similar  mission.  This 
time,  as  the  crews  camped  upon  the  shore  the 
tents  were  twice  flooded  by  the  rising  tide.  At 
the  end  of  that  journey  he  had  to  comfort  a  little 
flock  which  had  lost  entire  families  by  starvation 
in    the    preceding    winter,    and    had    then    been 


76  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

attacked  by  influenza.  Scarcely  had  he  returned 
from  this  journey  when  a  cry  of  distress  reached 
him  from  another  station  a  hundred  miles  away. 
''  I  went  at  once,"  he  says  in  his  own  simple 
fashion.  It  meant  another  toilsome  canoe  journey 
through  bad  weather,  even  for  Moosonee. 

At  the  station  he  found  influenza  raging  in 
such  wise  that  it  threatened  to  sweep  away  the 
whole  population.  But  the  presence  of  this  one 
strong  man  gave  all  new  hope ;  the  sick  revived  ; 
and  after  nearly  five  weeks  of  nursing,  cheering, 
and  teaching,  Horden  could  turn  his  face  again 
homeward,  ''  leaving  no'  one  seriously  ill."  The 
mosquitoes  were  a  trouble  on  that  journey ;  but 
in  the  following  letter  he  has  to  tell  the  story  of 
a  ship's  crew  frozen  up  in  the  bay,  with  the 
thermometer  at  48°  below  zero.  The  extremes 
of  temperature  to  which  the  country  is  subject 
were  trying  to  the  European.  In  summer  the 
thermometer  might  be  100"  in  the  shade,  in  the 
winter  50°  below  zero. 

Whatever  trials  befell  the  Mission  or  the 
Indians  under  his  care,  Horden  never  lost  heart 
or  good-humour.  Here  is  his  own  account  of 
one    incident     which    admirably    illustrates     liis 


A  PIONEER  IN  THE  FAR  WEST  77 

contentment  under  hardship.  He  is  on  one  of 
his  long  canoe  journeys.  ''We  put  ashore  on  a 
rocky  point  for  breakfast ;  we  Ht  our  fire  and  put 
on  our  kettles,  but  before  they  had  time  to  boil 
a  most  terrific  storm  broke  out,  which  at  once 
extinguished  our  fire ;  the  rain,  accompanied  by 
a  fall  of  large  hailstones,  many  of  them  as  large 
as  pistol  bullets,  some  as  large  as  musket  balls, 
was  tremendous,  while  the  thunder  and  lightning 
were  deafening  and  blinding.  The  violence  of 
the  storm  apparently  soon  spent  itself,  and  we 
lit  the  fire  a  second  time,  being  now  allowed  to 
complete  the  cooking.  Myself  and  the  arch- 
deacon sat  down  to  breakfast  encased  in  our 
waterproofs,  breakfast  being  composed  of  bread, 
coffee,  and  dried  goose,  the  latter  very  good,  but 
very,  very  hard.  We  had  scarcely  sat  two 
minutes  when  the  storm  broke  out  again  with 
redoubled  violence ;  but  it  was  not  to  again 
deprive  me  of  my  breakfast,  of  which  I  felt  very 
much  in  need,  so  I  simply  placed  my  bread  under 
my  plate  and  sat  it  out.  The  rain  did  for  milk 
in  my  hot  coffee,  and  somewhat  softened  my 
hard  goose ;  if  it  made  it  a  little  insipid  it  did  not 
much   matter  to  an  old  traveller  like  myself;  of 


78  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

the  bread  I  took  a  pinch  as  I  required  it ;  then 
as  if  to  reward  us  for  our  constancy,  the  storm 
after  a  while  ceased  and  allowed  us  to  finish  our 
meal  in  peace." 

On  yet  another  journey  the  Bishop  is  drawn 
by  a  team  of  dogs,  which  do  forty  miles  in  a  little 
over  six  hours.  When  night  came  the  little  party 
looked  for  rest  and  then  another  early  start. 

*'  But  this  was  not  to  be  ;  the  weather  was 
very  rough,  and  the  atmosphere  so  thick  that 
nothing  seaward  was  visible,  so  we  remained  in 
camp  and  passed  most  of  the  day  in  reading.  I  had 
placed  the  Sunday  Magazine  in  my  hand-bag,  and 
this  proved  a  source  of  much  interest  to  us  all." 

Writing  in  February  1885,  the  Bishop  has  to 
record  '^  the  formal  opening  of  the  chancel  of 
our  cathedral."  Of  course,  it  was  a  building  of 
the  simplest  kind,  but  its  furniture  and  decorations 
were  at  least  remarkable  in  one  respect,  since 
tlicy  were  largely  made  by  Horden  himself.  It 
is  not  every  cathedral  that  displays  the  handi- 
work of  its  Bishop. 

As  nearly  all  the  Indians  in  the  diocese  of 
Moosonee  have  now  become  Christians,  we 
shall  be  quite  prepared  to  hear  them  denounced 


A  PIONEER  IN  THE  FAR  WEST  79 

in  some  quarters  as  persons  of  little  independence 
or  resolution.  A  single  fact  may  usefully  be 
introduced  here.  In  1886  the  Bishop  records 
the  death  of  a  native  Christian,  ''only  an  Indian," 
but  one  whose  story  ''might  well  read  a  good 
lesson  to  many  a  more  highly  civilised  member 
of  human  society." 

Eliza  married  a  hunter.  There  came  a  hard 
winter ;  two  of  the  children  died  of  starvation ; 
she  and  her  husband  grew  more  and  more  ex- 
hausted. It  was  seventy  miles  to  the  nearest 
point  at  which  aid  could  be  obtained.  But 
Eliza  tied  her  two  surviving  Httle  ones  on  a 
sledge,  and,  preceded  by  her  husband,  set  off 
to  that  point.  Soon  the  husband's  strength 
gave  out.  Then  Eliza  lit  a  fire,  extemporised  a 
shelter,  placed  her  husband  within  it,  and 
drawing  the  sledge  behind  her,  pushed  on  for 
Albany.  Her  strength  held  out  till  she  reached 
it,  then  she  fell  unconscious.  When  she  revived, 
help  was  at  once  sent  off  to  the  husband,  but 
they  only  found  a  frozen  corpse.  The  children 
survived,  and  like  their  heroic  mother  grew  up 
devout,  consistent  Christians. 

The  story  of  Horden's  last  days  is  partly  told  in 


8o  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

an  unfinished  letter  from  himself,  dated  January  5, 
1893.  The  Bishop  had  long  suffered  acutely 
from  rheumatism,  the  result  of  exposure  upon  his 
journeys  ;  but  one  day  in  the  previous  November, 
whilst  engaged  early  in  the  morning  in  revising 
his  translations,  he  was  seized  with  a  more  serious 
attack.  He  revived  so  far  as  to  have  a  native 
helper  into  his  sick-room,  with  whom  he  continued 
to  work.  But  the  heart  was  affected,  and  on 
January  12,  just  a  week  after  he  began  the  letter, 
he  passed  quietly  away.  He  now  sleeps  in  the 
midst  of  the  flock  to  whom  he  had  given  nearly 
forty-two  years  of  labour. 

Horden  was  of  late  only  one  of  a  small  but 
noble  band  of  Christian  bishops  working  in  the 
vast  solitudes  that  lie  between  the  Canadian 
Pacific  Railway  and  the  Polar  seas.  Of  a  truth 
these  are  apostles.  Each  might  write  himself  down 
as  ''  in  journeyings  often,  in  perils  of  waters  .  .  . 
in  perils  in  the  wilderness  ...  in  weariness  and 
painfulness,  in  watchings  often,  in  hunger  and 
thirst,  in  fastings  often,  in  cold  and  nakedness. 
Besides  those  things  that  are  without,  that 
which  cometh  upon  me  daily,  the  care  of  all  the 
churches." 


THE    PILGRIM    MISSIONARY    OF 
THE    PUNJAB 


THE    PILGRIM    MISSIONARY    OF 
THE    PUNJAB 

/^te'N  the  year  1880  the  British  forces  in 
11  Afghanistan  sustained  a  most  severe  and 
^^  bloody  defeat  at  the  battle  of  Maiwand. 
The  shattered  remnant  found  refuge  in  Kan- 
dahar, and  were  there  closely  besieged,  until 
the  brilliant  victory  gained  by  Sir  Frederick 
Roberts,  after  the  great  march  from  Kabul 
to  Kandahar,  once  more  set  them  free. 

During  the  siege  a  sortie  was  ordered 
against  a  village  from  which  a  destructive 
fire  was  being  poured  in  upon  Kandahar. 
In  the  hospital  within  the  walls,  helping  to 
receive  the  wounded  as  they  arrived  from  the 
front,  was  a  missionary.  After  a  time  he  went 
to  the  Kabul  gate  for  the  same  purpose.  There 
they  told  him  of  certain  wounded  men  lying 
untended     in    a    shrine     some     two     or    three 


84  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

hundred  yards  outside.  With  a  dooly  and 
bearers  he  at  once  went  off  to  their  aid,  though 
the  fire  was  heavy.  Arrived  at  the  shrine 
originally  pointed  out,  he  found  it  empty : 
the  wounded  were  not  there,  but  at  another 
shrine  some  thirty  yards  away.  The  danger 
increased  at  every  step,  and  an  officer  advised 
the  missionary  not  to  proceed.  He  could  not, 
however,  be  persuaded  to  return ;  and,  whilst 
starting  for  the  second  shrine,  he  was  struck 
by  a  bullet.  He  was  taken  into  Kandahar  in 
the  dooly  he  had  brought  out  for  others,  and 
on  the  same  afternoon  he  died.  The  missionary 
who  thus  fell  was  George  Maxwell  Gordon, 
an  honorary  agent  of  the  Church  Missionary 
Society. 

The  '^  pilgrim  missionary  of  the  Punjab " 
belonged  to  the  band  of  noble  men  who, 
possessing  ample  means,  have  dedicated  all 
without  reserve  to  the  service  of  Christ  in 
foreign  lands.  George  Maxwell  Gordon  might 
have  lived  a  life  of  ease  at  home ;  he  was 
content  to  ''  endure  hardness  as  a  good  soldier 
of  Jesus    Christ."     He    might   have  filled    posts 


THE  MISSIONARY  OF  THE  PUNJAB       85 

of  honour  under  less  exacting  circumstances ; 
he  preferred  the  perils  of  a  pioneer's  work  in 
India. 

The  life  of  George  Maxwell  Gordon  before 
he  went  out  to  the  mission-field  is  soon  told. 
The  son  of  Captain  J.  E.  Gordon,  M.P.  for 
Dundalk,  he  was  born  on  August  loth,  1839. 
His  father,  a  man  of  unbounded  energy,  and 
of  equal  zeal  in  the  cause  of  Protestantism, 
was  a  familiar  figure  at  Exeter  Hall  in  the 
days  of  its  power.  The  son  was  educated  at 
home,  and  then  under  the  care  of  the  Rev. 
Henry  Moule.  In  Mr.  Moule's  vicarage  at 
Fordington,  he  breathed  a  missionary  atmosphere. 
Two  missionaries  went  forth  from  that  family ; 
and  another  son,  the  Rev.  H.  C.  G.  Moule, 
Principal  of  Ridley  Hall,  has  done  more  than 
any  other  man  living  to  foster  the  missionary 
spirit  among  the  graduates  and  undergraduates 
at  Cambridge.  At  eighteen,  Gordon  entered 
Trinit}^,  Cambridge,  where  he  graduated  in 
1 86 1.  His  own  wishes  as  to  a  career  had 
been  varied.  He  thought  of  many  paths,  but 
of  none  of  them  for  long.  Once  he  had  wished 
to  be  a    soldier,  then  a  sailor,    then    an    Indian 


86  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

civilian  ;  "  anything,  in  short,  but  a  clergyman." 
To  the  influence  of  Dr.  Marsh  and  his  daughter 
he  owed  the  readiness  to  be  ordained.  It  was 
whilst  with  Dr.  Marsh  at  Beddington  that 
Gordon  met  the  Rev.  Thomas  Valpy  French, 
afterwards  the  heroic  Bishop  of  Lahore.  To 
companionship  with  French  can,  no  doubt, 
be  traced  the  genesis  of  a  new  aim  in  life,  and 
to  him  Gordon  first  spoke  of  a  desire  to  be  a 
missionary. 

A  definite  resolution  was  presently  formed, 
and  in  1866  Gordon  offered  himself  to  the 
Church  Missionary  Society.  His  wish  was  to 
serve  without  stipend  or  allowance,  and  the 
offer  was  accepted.  Gordon  went  out  to  India 
in  the  December  of  that  year,  and  joined  the 
Madras  itinerancy.  It  was  the  kind  of  work 
which  exactly  suited  his  athletic  frame  and 
his  eager  temperament,  the  kind  of  work  to 
which  he  always  gave  himself  with  delight 
until  his  life's  end.  Yet  before  long,  con- 
tinuous fever  broke  down  his  health,  and  he 
went  to  Australia  to  recruit.  One  result  of 
this  was  a  pressing  appeal  later  on,  that 
Gordon    should    become  the  first  bishop  of   the 


THE  MISSIONARY  OF  THE  PUNJAB        87 

new  see  of  Rockhampton,  an  appeal  which  he 
ultimately  rejected,  to  enter  upon  the  work 
in  North  India,  which  led  to  his  death.  Re- 
turning, he  visited  Travancore,  where  the 
romance  of  mission  life  finds  the  amplest 
illustration. 

His  heart  went  out,  however,  towards  the 
man  and  the  scenes  which  had  first  stirred  in 
him  an  interest  in  foreign  missions.  He  came 
home  for  a  short  time  in  1870,  and  the  Com- 
mittee of  the  Society  accepted  an  offer  from 
Gordon  that  he  should  join  Mr.  French  at 
Lahore.  But  Gordon  was  nothing  if  not 
thorough.  He  felt  that  a  knowledge  of  Persian 
would  be  invaluable  in  the  new  field,  and 
accordingly  resolved  to  take  Persia  on  the  way 
out,  in  order  to  learn  the  language  under  the 
most  favourable  conditions.  In  1871,  therefore, 
we  find  him  in  Persia,  just  when  the  country 
was  in  the  throes  of  famine. 

With  characteristic  zeal  he  could  not  use 
his  money  to  procure  ease.  "  The  ride  to 
Teheran,"  he  wrote,  ''is  four  hundred  miles, 
and  by  changing  horses  every  fifteen  or 
twenty     miles,     and    riding    day    and    night,    I 


88  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

got  to  Teheran  in  five  days."  The  sights  by 
the  way  and  wherever  the  missionaries  went 
were  heart-rending.  It  was  Httle  they  could 
do  in  their  labours  ''as  well  for  the  body  as 
the  soul,"  but  Gordon  soon  found  himself  acting 
as  *'  relieving  officer,  doctor,  purveyor,  poor- 
house  guardian  and  inspector,  outfitter,  and 
undertaker  to  a  community  of  eight  hundred 
poor  Armenians."  At  Shiraz  he  lodged  in  one 
little  room,  he  believed  in  the  same  house  as 
that  in  which  Henry  Martyn  had  been.  At 
Hamadan  he  distributed  not  only  the  resources 
sent  from  Christians,  but  also  money  which  Sir 
Moses  Montefiore  had  remitted  for  the  Jews  of 
that  place.  The  purpose  for  which  he  visited 
Persia  was  not  forgotten,  but  he  saw  that  work 
of  another  kind  had  been  put  into  his  hand. 

At  the  age  of  thirty-three  Gordon  found  him- 
self with  French  at  Lahore,  and  teaching  in 
the  Divinity  School.  But  his  love  of  evange- 
listic work  drove  him  to  use  the  college 
vacation  in  itinerating.  His  own  ideas  entirel}^ 
coincided  with  those  of  French.  They  both 
felt  the  necessity  of  laying  aside  as  far  as 
possible   the  signs  of  the   *'  English    gentleman " 


THE  MISSIONARY  OF  THE  PUNJAB       89 

and  approaching  the  natives  much  as  their  own 
religious  enthusiasts  would.  As  he  gained 
experience  he  began  to  take  some  of  the 
students  with  him  upon  these  tours,  until  at 
last  itinerating  became  his  only  work.  Gradually, 
too,  he  laid  aside  one  little  comfort  after  another, 
until  he  became  a  veritable  fakir. 

In  time  Gordon's  plans  took  the  form  of  a 
systematic  itineracy  in  a  district  lying  between 
the  Indus  and  the  Jhilam.  Working  in  a 
methodical  way,  and  inspiring  native  agents  with 
something  of  his  own  enthusiasm,  he  prepared 
the  whole  of  his  district  for  the  labours  of  a 
permanent  mission.  Then  he  went  farther 
afield. 

Re^^nell  Ta3dor,  one  of  those  Christian  soldiers 
to  whose  example  in  India  the  nation  owes  so 
much,  had  some  years  before  urged  the  Church 
Missionary  Society  to  undertake  a  mission  in 
Derajat.  Thither,  at  the  end  of  1876,  Gordon 
went.  The  Bilochis  seem  at  once  to  have  won 
his  heart,  and  with  characteristic  generosity  the 
man  who  lived  like  a  fakir  offered  10,000  rupees 
to  start  a  medical  mission  amongst  them.  His 
inspection    over,    he    returned    to    other    fields. 


90  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

Later  on  he  was  at  Delhi,  doing  the  work  of  an 
evangehst  amongst  the  native  retainers  attending 
princes  at  the  great  Durbar,  when  the  Queen  was 
proclaimed  Empress  of  India.  Then  he  was  back 
again  in  the  Jhilam  district. 

There  were  yet  other  fields  over  which  Gordon 
yearned.  In  1 878  war  broke  out  with  Afghanistan. 
To  Gordon  it  seemed  that  this  might  be  a  means 
of  carrying  the  Gospel  into  a  land  in  which  its 
proclamation  was  attended  with  peculiar  difficulty 
and  peril.  He  accordingly  offered  his  services 
as  honorary  chaplain  for  the  campaign,  and 
was  attached  to  General  Biddulph's  command. 
Gordon's  discharge  of  his  new  duties  was  far 
from  formal,  as  his  diaries  show.  "  A  very 
hearty  little  prayer-meeting  in  my  tent,  attended 
by  four  officers  and  eight  soldiers,"  and  many  like 
entries  witness  to  the  thoroughness  of  his 
chaplain  life.  He  returned  to  his  old  work 
to  find  new  helpers.  Hurrying  on  in  advance  of 
the  returning  troops,  he  surprised  his  colleagues 
at  Clarkabad.  He  arrived  on  foot,  accompanied 
by  his  spaniel,  and  looking  to  the  eye  of  the  new- 
comers very  much  like  an  Old  Testament  prophet. 
In   1880  he  went  again  to  Kandahar,   where  he 


THE  MISSIONARY  OF  THE  PUNJAB       91 

fell  in  the  field  under  the  circumstances  already 
described. 

Such,  in  outline,  was  the  missionary  life  of 
George  Maxwell  Gordon.  He  would  have  been 
the  last  person  in  the  world  to  write  himself 
down  as  a  hero.  He  never  courted  praise,  nor 
sought  hardships  to  win  the  name  of  an 
ascetic.  His  use  of  wealth  was  entirely  in  the 
interest  of  others.  He  took  nothing  from  the 
Society  with  which  he  worked ;  he  gave  it  much. 
The  people  about  him  profited  more  by  his 
purse  than  he  did  himself.  But  he  spent  his 
money,  and  accepted  hardships  with  a  purpose 
— to  get  at  the  people. 

Thus,  itinerating  in  the  Jhilam  district,  he 
dispensed  with  a  tent  and  used  the  village  guest- 
house, the  hospitality  of  which  was  shared  with 
the  cattle.  In  larger  towns  he  often  followed  the 
same  rule,  and  would  shelter  in  a  native  inn  with 
the  humblest  of  travellers,  in  preference  to  lodging 
with  European  friends.  On  his  itinerating  tours 
he  did  not  even  care  to  use  the  native  bedstead 
as  a  resting-place  ;  '^  the  ground  is  good  enough," 
he  would  say,  and  upon  a  little  straw  or  date- 
palm  leaves  he  slept  soundly.     In   the  matter  of 


92  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

food  he  was  equally  independent ;  he  drank  water 
or  milk  and  water,  rarely  ate  meat,  but  was 
content  with  "  chuppaties,"  fruits  and  vegetables. 

Yet  the  man  who  sought  no  comfort  for  himself 
was  full  of  consideration  for  others.  He  was 
known  to  tramp  all  day  long  under  the  burning 
sun  whilst  a  weak  and  sickly  native  rode  his 
pony.  In  the  cold  of  the  trans-frontier  winter  he 
was  met  one  day,  miles  from  his  station,  without 
overcoat  or  vest ;  he  had  taken  them  off  to  clothe 
a  sick  native  and  child  whom  he  had  met  by  the 
way  suffering  from  the  cold. 

Nor  was  Gordon  less  mindful  of  his  colleagues. 
When  one  of  them,  itinerating  with  him  upon  the 
frontier,  making  long  marches  every  day,  shelter- 
ing at  night  in  the  dirty,  windowless  guest-house 
of  each  successive  town  or  village,  broke  down 
under  the  strain,  he  found  in  Gordon  a  nurse 
tender  as  a  woman.  To  comfort  another,  he 
started  at  once  upon  a  journe}^  which,  in  its 
results,  proved  to  be  much  even  for  Gordon's 
iron  constitution.  He  had  five  rivers,  two  of 
them  bridgeless,  to  cross.  One  of  them,  the 
Indus,  was  at  that  season  swollen  by  the  melting 
snows  of  the  Himalayas,  and  was  several  miles 


THE  MISSIONARY  OF  THE  PUNJAB       93 

wide.  Beyond  its  turbid  stream,  he  took  horse  and 
rode  all  night  until  the  Chenab  was  reached. 
This  crossed  by  ferry,  he  arrived  at  Multan ;  he 
took  train  by  night  and  travelled  200  miles  to 
Lahore;  then  also  by  train  another  hundred 
miles  to  Jhilam  ;  and  then  by  boat  50  miles  to 
Pind.  All  this  to  comfort  a  friend.  The  incident 
is  told  in  Gordon's  own  words  in  the  supple- 
mentary chapter  to  Mr.  Lewis's  account  of 
Gordon's  life  and  work. 

On  the  march  into  Afghanistan  he  was  equally 
independent,  equally  careless  of  comfort.  In  his 
diary  there  are  entries  such  as  this  touching  a  tramp 
of  twenty  miles :  ''  Starting  at  night  in  advance, 
I  felt  my  way  along  in  the  dark,  partly  by  the 
sensation  of  a  trodden  path  and  partly  by  the 
stars,  knowing  our  course  to  be  west  by  north. 
After  a  nine  miles'  walk  I  lay  down,  but  found 
the  road  unusually  hard,  and  was  constantly 
awakened  by  the  guard  passing  with  the  baggage, 
who  must  have  thought  me  either  dead  or  sick. 
....  I  rose  from  an  extemporised  bed  at  four 
in  the  morning." 

And  again,  writing  from  the  Bolan  Pass : 
^'As  we  ascended  ....  we   were    horrified    by 


94  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

seeing  the  bodies  of  several  bullock-drivers  who 
had  perished  the  previous  night,  and  of  a  dozen 
or  more  bullocks  which  had  shared  their  fate. 
The  violence  of  the  wind  as  it  swept  down  the 
narrow  ravines  and  carried  dust  and  grit  into  our 
faces,  was  almost  irresistible  by  man  and  beast. 
It  took  me  three  hours  to  walk  four  miles  against 
it  one  evening  after  sunset,  and  some  natives 
who  accompanied  me  gave  in  and  sat  shivering 
under  the  rocks,  and  were  not  brought  in  till 
after  midnight." 

Agreeably  with  all  his  views  of  life,  Gordon's 
exclamation,  when  he  found  himself  with  the 
besieged  garrison  at  Kandahar,  was :  ^'  How 
fortunate  I  am  to  be  here  where  I  can  be  of  some 
use  !  "  Equally  characteristic  of  the  man  was  the 
will  by  which  Gordon  left  much  of  his  means  to 
the  Church  Missionary  Society  for  the  support  of 
the  work  he  had  begun. 

To  fear  Gordon  was  as  complete  a  stranger 
as  to  self-indulgence.  The  committee  at  home 
cautioned  him  against  exposing  himself  in 
Afghanistan ;  but  Gordon  never  counted  the 
possible  cost  of  an  cfibrt  to  reach  the  people. 
Of  the  fanatical  Ghazis,  whom  he  wrote  down  as 


THE  MISSIONARY  OF  THE  PUNJAB       95 

^'  one  great  barrier  to  missionary  work  and 
friendly  intercourse  with  the  people,"  he  speaks 
in  friendly  terms.  Whilst  recording  the  murder- 
ous deeds  of  these  ascetics  and  the  punishments 
which  fell  upon  criminals  taken  red-handed,  he 
offers  an  apology  for  them,  as  persons  "  one 
cannot  help  pitying,"  because  they  *'  firmly  believe 
they  are  doing  service  to  God  and  their  country." 
Whilst  planning  future  work  at  Kandahar,  he 
admits  that  he  is  there  at  the  risk  of  his  life. 
Yet  where  other  Europeans  could  not  venture 
alone,  Gordon  went  in  safety.  He  spent  hours 
in  the  city  discussing  with  maulvis,  when  the 
authorities  deemed  his  life  in  danger,  and  at  last 
threatened  him  with  compulsory  return  to 
India. 

Gordon  himself  has  reminded  us  how  closely 
the  native  observes  the  European,  and  it  was 
inevitable  that  an  Englishman  who  did  not  live 
like  an  Englishman  should  be  the  subject  of  the 
closest  scrutiny.  But  Gordon  could  bear  this, 
and  on  one  occasion  the  most  curious  testimony 
was  borne  to  the  silent  power  of  this  life.  A 
certain  soivar  was  great  at  Bilochi  and  other 
frontier  tongues  ;  Gordon,  wishing  to  have  him 


96  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

as  a  native  teacher,   offered  high  pay  and  com- 
pensation for  the  loss  of  pension. 

''  Sahib,"  said  the  man,  ''  I  dare  not.  I  should 
be  made  a  Christian." 

Gordon  promised  that  there  should  be  no  talk 
of  religion. 

*' I  love  Gordon  Sahib,"  was  the  answer,  ''and 
in  spite  of  myself,  I  am  sure  I  could  not  help 
accepting  his  religion." 

The  life  which  speaks  with  eloquence  so  per- 
suasive is  rarer  than  we  could  wish. 

Gordon  was  but  forty-one  when  he  fell  at 
Kandahar.  A  single  line  upon  the  family  tablet 
in  Hadlow  Churchyard  summarises  the  histor}'- 
of  his  manhood : 

"  And  he  left  all,  rose  up,  and  followed  Him." 


THE  MEN  WHO  DIED  AT  LOKOJA 


THE  MEN  WHO  DIED  AT  LOKOJA 


(i) 


N  June  25th,  1 89 1,  there  died  at  Lokoja 
on  the  river  Niger,  the  Rev.  John 
Alfred  Robinson.  On  March  5th,  1892, 
at  the  same  place,  there  died  Mr.  Graham 
Wilmot  Brooke.  They  fell  in  an  attempt  to 
pierce  the  Sudan  from  its  western  side ;  an 
attempt  upon  which  the  shadow  of  failure  seems 
at  present  to  rest,  but  an  attempt  attended  with 
so  much  encouragement  that  eventual  success 
cannot  be  doubted.  Indeed,  the  first  steps 
towards  a  renewal  of  the  work  are  already  being 
taken. 

Both  were  remarkable  men,  in  character  and 
training  strongly  contrasted,  but  one  in  zeal  for 
the  same  cause  and  fidelity  to  the  same  Master. 

John  Alfred  Robinson — born  in  a  family  which 
has  many  sons  in  holy  orders,  the  most  eminent 
being  Professor  Armitage  Robinson,  of  Cambridge 


100  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

— graduated  at  Cambridge  in  1881,  taking  a 
first-class  in  the  theological  school.  He  first 
volunteered  for  the  mission-field  in  1886. 
Graham  Wilmot  Brooke,  who  died  at  the  age 
of  twenty-seven,  was  a  young  layman  of  means, 
originally  educated  for  the  army,  who  had  been 
led  to  desire  a  share  in  the  evangelisation 
of  the  Sudan  by  the  influence  of  General 
Gordon. 

For  the  purposes  of  these  pages  it  is  needless 
to  recall  the  general  history  of  Christian  missions 
on  the  river  Niger.  The  almost  unique  person- 
ality of  the  black  bishop,  Crowther,  long  gave 
them  peculiar  interest  in  the  eyes  of  English 
people.  Nor  is  it  necessary  to  do  more  than 
mention  the  differences  of  opinion  in  regard  to 
the  administration  of  the  Niger  mission  which 
long  occasioned  so  much  anxiety  to  the  Church 
Missionary  Society  and  its  friends.  Here  I 
wish  only  to  speak  of  the  attempt  on  the 
Sudan  which  will  always  be  associated  with  the 
names  of  J.  A.  Robinson  and  Graham  Wilmot 
Brooke. 

The  two  men  were,  in  different  ways, 
ndmirably  suited  for   their  task.     Mr.    Robinson 


THE  MEN  WHO  DIED  AT  LOKOJA       loi 

was  a  scholar,  who  brought  a  trained  intellect 
to  bear  upon  the  task  of  setting  the  claims  of 
Christ  Jesus  before  the  Mohammedans  of  the 
Niger  Sudan.  The  linguistic  and  translational 
part  of  the  work  was  that  upon  which  his 
interest  chiefly  centred.  Mr.  Brooke  was  an 
evangelist  pure  and  simple,  but  wholly  free  from 
the  bondage  of  conventionality.  Each  was  a 
distinct  and  strong  personality ;  but  the  one 
fitted  into  the  other.  They  had  the  same 
enthusiasm ;  they  trusted  the  same  methods. 
Masters  of  the  Hausa  language  and  equipped 
with  some  Christian  literature  in  that  tongue, 
they  knew  that  a  field  of  almost  unexampled 
magnitude  and  interest  lay  before  them.  That  field 
was  carefully  chosen  with  regard  to  its  linguistic 
as  well  as  its  physical  and  religious  conditions. 
Mr.  Wilmot  Brooke  made  a  preliminary  survey 
before  committing  himself  definitely  to  the  work, 
and  the  whole  scheme  was  devoid  of  the  hap- 
hazard element  which  has  sometimes  brought 
disappointment  upon  well-intentioned  projects. 

The  Sudan  was  the  true  object  of  the  mission, 
an  area  some  3,500  miles  by  500,  containing 
a  population  which   has  been  roughly  estimated 


102  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

at    8o,000;000.       The     particular     nation    upon 

which    it    was    sought    to    concentrate    attention 

was  that  of  the  Hausas,  a  people  distinguished 

alike  in  war  and  in  commerce,  yet  hardly  pressed 

by  sterner   nations — the   Arabs    and    the    Fulas. 

By  nature  inteUigent,  courteous,  accessible,  and 

industrious,     they    invite     the    labours     of    the 

evangelist,  more  especially  as  they  only  accepted 

Mohammedanism    at    the    point    of    the   sw^ord, 

and     follow    it     with     no     enthusiasm.      Their 

language    is    spoken     by    some     15,000,000    of 

people,    of  whom,    perhaps,    300,000   read    and 

write  it  in  the  Arabic  character. 

The   principles     upon    which    the   work    was 
to  be    carried    on    were   modern,    yet    also   very 
ancient.      Given     health,    the     literary    part    of 
the   undertaking  was    only  a   question    of  time  ; 
but    active   evangelistic    work   in     the   crowided 
towns  and    villages    within    reach    of  those  who 
made   Lokoja    their    centre    was   not    so    easy. 
It    seemed    to    these   pioneers    that    it    was    im- 
possible  to   expect    open    doors  if  the    mission- 
aries went  as  British  subjects,  with  the  shadowy 
but    still    threatening    power    of    Great    Britain 
behind     them.       They    resolved,     therefore,     as 


THE  MEN  WHO  DIED  AT  LOKOJA       T03 

George  Maxwell  Gordon  did  in  the  Punjab, 
to  sink,  as  far  as  possible,  the  European  ;  to  use 
native  dress  and  native  food ;  to  lay  aside  any 
claims  which  Englishmen  might  have  upon  the 
protection  of  their  country's  flag,  and  to  tender 
formal  submission  to  native  rulers  amongst  whose 
subjects  they  preached.  This  seemed  to  them 
the  best  protection  against  native  fanaticism, 
and  the  best  means  of  securing  freedom  from 
the  restraint  which  the  civil  power  likes  to 
exercise  over  missionary  enterprise  where 
there  are  signs  that  a  breach  of  the  peace  may 
ensue. 

It  was  at  first  thought  that  on  these  plans 
work  amongst  the  Hausas  might  be  carried 
on  with  fewer  disadvantages  than  were  met 
with  in  other  African  missions  at  a  distance 
from  the  coast.  The  life  of  the  people  was 
such  that  Europeans  might,  without  serious 
difficulty,  follow  native  habits  in  regard  to 
house,  food,  and  clothing.  Transport  was 
simplified,  for  the  Niger  provided  a  great 
highway.  The  climate  even  w^as  recommended 
as  less  perilous  than  on  the  delta  of  the 
Niger   or   in    any  other   African    missions.     But 


104  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

in  this  last  particular,  as  we  shall  presently  see, 
the  forecasts  were  conspicuously  falsified  by 
events. 

The  centre  of  the  work  was  to  be  Lokoja, 
a  town  lying  at  the  junction  of  the  Niger 
and  the  Binue,  some  300  miles  from  the  sea. 
Its  population  was  comparatively  small — only 
about  3,000;  but  it  was  an  admirable  centre, 
commanding  the  two  great  rivers,  focussing  much 
of  the  trade  of  the  district,  bringing  together 
men  from  all  the  surrounding  tribes,  and  enjoy- 
ing a  secured  peace  from  the  presence  of  the 
Royal  Niger  Company.  Many  years  before 
this  there  had  been  at  Lokoja  a  model  farm, 
the  circumstances  of  which  suggested  to 
Dickens  the  ''  Borioboola  Gha "  of  ''  Bleak 
House."  There  was  still  a  native  congregation 
there,  but  it  was  not  the  fruits  of  missionary 
enterprise  amongst  the  people  around. 

The  plans  complete  and  a  little  body  of 
workers  secured,  Mr.  Robinson  left  first  for 
the  field.  Shortly  afterwards,  on  January 
20th,  1890,  farewell  was  taken  of  the  others 
at  Exeter  Hall.  Mr.  Wilmot  Brooke  and  his 
wife,    the    Rev.     Eric     Lewis    and     his     sister, 


THE  MEN  WHO  DIED  AT  LOKOJA       105 

and    Dr.    C.    F.  Harford-Battersby  were  in   this 
company. 

On  April  4th  the  party  reached  Lokoja. 
They  found  the  Christian  congregation  to 
number  about  a  hundred,  chiefly  formed  of 
African  immigrants  from  Sierra  Leone  and 
native  servants  of  the  Royal  Niger  Com- 
pany. The  spiritual  life  of  that  congrega- 
tion was  burning  low,  and  its  example  was 
not  salutary.  But  without  delay  the  mission 
party  settled  down  to  work.  The  congre- 
gation was  taken  in  hand ;  translational  work 
systematically  pursued ;  the  hospital  worked 
by  Dr.  Harford-Battersby ;  visiting,  nursing, 
and  the  instruction  of  Christian  adherents 
committed  to  the  ladies.  Thus  the  Sudan 
mission  began  its  task  without  a  shadow  even 
of  the  tragic  element  so  early  apparent  in  the 
life  of  the  Nyanza  mission,  on  the  other  side  of 
Africa. 

At  the  end  of  six  months  Mr.  Robinson  had, 
however,  a  chequered  story  to  tell.  The 
spiritual  life  of  the  old  congregation,  which 
was  not  missionary  in  its  constitution,  had 
been     renewed     under     measures     of    discipline 


io6  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

and  under  personal  pleading  such  as  are 
too  rarely  employed  in  congregations  at  home. 
The  use  of  native  dress  had  been  found  help- 
ful with  the  people  and  a  comfort  to  the  wearers. 
On  an  early  advance  up  the  Niger  the  population 
had  welcomed  the  change^  and  cried :  ''  Ah,  that 
is  a  sensible  dress  for  this  country.  Now  we 
know  that  you  really  want  to  come  near  us." 
Native  food  had  been  used  without  inconvenience 
or  harm.  The  medical  work  had  proceeded 
steadily,  making,  as  it  always  does,  an  entrance 
for  the  evangelist  into  many  homes  which 
might  otherwise  be  closed.  The  first  baptism 
was  that  of  a  Mohammedan  patient  in  the 
hospital.  The  workers  had  found  the  language 
easier  than  they  had  ventured  to  expect ;  but 
saw  reason  to  believe  that  little  could  be 
done  in  the  interior  until  they  had  at  least  one 
Gospel  printed  in  idiomatic  Hausa. 

Sorrow,  however,  had  early  fallen  upon  the 
party.  In  September  Mr.  Wilmot  Brooke  fell 
ill  of  typhoid  fever,  and  to  save  his  life  returned 
home  for  a  little  while.  For  a  time  the 
diminished  European  staff  devoted  itself  chiefly 
to    the    study  of   the    language ;    but  in  Januaiy 


THE  MEN  WHO  DIED  AT  LOKOJA       107 

1 89 1,  aggressive  work  was  once  more  taken  up 
with  vigour.  Two  more  ladies,  Miss  Griffin  and 
Miss  Clapton,  now  arrived  as  reinforcements. 
Mr.  Lewis  and  one  native  helper  went  off  itiner- 
ating amongst  the  villages  occupied  by  the 
heathen  Basas.  The  tour  was  marked  by  no 
unusual  incident,  but  showed  a  large  field  in 
which  evangelistic  work  was  possible.  Mr. 
Lewis  was  recalled  by  the  news  of  serious  illness 
amongst  the  party  at  Lokoja.  A  tour  of  more 
importance  was  undertaken  by  Mr.  Robinson  and 
Dr.  Harford-Battersby,  also  accompanied  by  a 
native  agent.  Their  destination  was  Bida,  the 
capital  of  the  Nupe  kingdom,  a  town  with 
some  sixty  thousand  inhabitants.  Dr.  Harford- 
Battersby  had  not  long  recovered  from  haematuric 
fever,  and  felt  the  heat  severely.  Upon  him  the 
burden  of  the  work  fell,  with  the  result  that  the 
fever  returned.  He  was  carried  down  to  the 
boat,  and  thus  sent  back  to  Lokoja.  There  he 
found  Miss  Clapton  so  ill  that  to  remain  meant 
death.  Her  time  of  work  had  been  short,  but 
had  sufficed  to  prove  her  an  exceptionally  skilful 
missionary  of  varied  powers  and  equal  activit}^ 
Mr.   Lewis  was  also  amongst  the  invalids.     He 


io8  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 


first  went  down  the  river  to  Onitsha  for  change 
of  air ;  that  failing,  he  too  was  driven  home. 

But  a  still  sorer  trial  was  awaiting  the  mission. 
In  May  considerable  brain  exhaustion  had  shown 
itself  in  Mr.  Robinson,  who,  for  some  relief,  had 
handed  over  to  Mr.  Brooke  the  secretaryship  of 
the  mission.  But  just  then  the  presence  in 
Lokoja  of  a  mallam  of  repute  and  learning 
offered  an  unusual  opportunity  for  linguistic 
inquiry.  Into  this  Mr.  Robinson,  despite  his 
enfeebled  state,  plunged  with  ardour.  The 
result  was  an  alarming  attack  of  what  was  at  first 
supposed  to  be  haematuric  fever.  But  the  fever 
yielded  to  treatment,  and  then  the  real  trouble 
was  seen  to  be  brain  meningitis.  The  end 
speedily  drew  near.  ''  To  the  last,"  wrote  his 
colleague,  'Mie  was  wonderfully  free  from  acute 
pain,  and  quite  free  from  delirium ;  but  on  the 
25th  (of  June)  his  strength  sank  rapidly,  and  he 
became  quite  calm.  Towards  midnight,  after  a 
long  period  of  quietness,  he  awakened  suddenly 
and  completely,  and,  with  a  strong  and  vigorous 
voice,  called  out  '  God  be  praised,'  then  sinking 
back,  he  fell  asleep."  Mr.  Brooke  has  described  his 
friend's  character  in  terms  innocent  of  flattery : 


THE  MEN  WHO  DIED  AT  LOKOJA       109 

''  Possessed  of  rare  energy  of  mind  and  bod}^, 
and  with  great  power  of  adapting  himself  to 
circumstances,  so  that  he  seemed  equally  at  home 
whether  managing  a  steamer  on  the  delta,  or 
living  as  a  native  among  natives  in  Bida ;  at 
repairing  buildings  with  his  Kru  labourers,  or  at 
work  with  his  lexicons  and  concordances  in  his 
little  room  at  Lokoja — this  mission  could  never 
have  been  started  without  him ;  and  we  never 
expect  to  get  such  a  leader  or  such  a  companion 
again." 

The  loss  to  the  mission  was  all  the  greater 
because  Mr.  Robinson  had  taken  upon  himself 
the  linguistic  work  without  which  evangelistic 
enterprise  could  hope  to  leave  but  ineffectual  and 
transitory  impressions.  His  earnest  hope  was  to 
give  the  natives  some  portions  of  the  Holy 
Scriptures  in  the  Hausa  language,  portions  so 
skilfully  rendered  and  so  judiciously  got  up  as  to 
have  little  trace  of  European  handiwork  about 
them.  He  was  the  happier  in  this  work  because 
of  the  ease  and  charm  of  his  manner  with  the 
natives.  "He  might,"  says  Mr.  Lewis,  "have 
been  a  Hausa  born,  so  perfectly  was  he  at  his 
ease  among  them  ;    and,  what  is   perhaps  more 


no  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

difficult,  they  were  free  to  come  in  and  sit  down 
at  all  hours  of  the  day  and  make  themselves 
perfectly  at  home,  without  seriously  interrupting 
work  he  might  have  on  hand." 

The  mission,  thus  weakened,  lost  another 
recruit  in  August,  when  health  compelled  the 
return  home  of  Mr.  Roberts.  Yet  the  work  never 
ceased,  and  from  time  to  time  encouragement  was 
forthcoming.  But  in  January  a  new  danger 
arose.  A  neighbouring  chief  threatened  Lokoja 
and  attacked  its  outskirts.  Mr.  Brooke  deemed 
it  best  to  send  the  ladies  of  the  mission  home, 
but  remained  himself  to  face  whatever  difficulties 
might  arise.  A  colleague,  Mr.  Dobinson,  visited 
him  early  in  the  3^ear,  and  found  him  full  of  plans 
for  more  evangelistic  tours.  But  a  crowning 
disaster  was  about  to  fall. 

Mr.  Dobinson  left  Lokoja  on  February  29th, 
1892.  Scarcely  had  he  gone  when  Mr.  Brooke 
was  seized  with  fever,  and  his  condition  rapidly 
became  serious.  His  nurse  was  Mr.  J.  J. 
Williams,  a  tried  and  trusted  native  helper.  "  I 
asked,"  wrote  Mr.  Williams,  ^'  if  I  should  call  any 
of  the  Europeans  here,  whom  he  might  tell  me  of, 
to  come  and  sec  him,  in  case  of  his  getting  very 


THE  MEN  WHO  DIED  AT  LOKOJA       iii 

serious.  He  said :  '  No,  I  trust  in  you.  If  I 
should  die,  bury  me  in  my  native  dress  beside  the 
late  Mr.  Robinson's  grave.  If  it  is  difficult  to 
get  a  coffin,  put  my  body  in  a  native  mat,  and 
bury  me.'  "  Mr.  Brooke  arranged  his  affairs  with 
the  utmost  care,  and  wrote  a  short  inscription  for 
his  own  grave.  It  was  simplicity  itself:  the 
details  of  family  and  birth,  a  single  text  speaking 
of  the  resurrection,  and  then  the  record  of  his 
missionary  work  in  the  words,  ''  Preached  Christ 
in  this  neighbourhood  between  July  1889  and 
February  1892."     He  died  on  March  5th. 

From  the  loss  of  Mr.  J.  A.  Robinson  and  Mr. 
Wilmot  Brooke  the  mission  has  not  ytt  recovered. 
There  are  difficulties  connected  with  it  into  which 
it  is  no  part  of  this  narrative  to  enter.  But  the 
careers  of  these  two  men  at  least  serve  as  a 
rebuke  to  any  lightly  uttered  charges  which 
impugn  alike  the  sincerity  and  the  zeal  of  the 
missionary  band.  Soberly,  weighing  all  things, 
they  planned  an  incursion  into  a  region  hitherto 
untouched,  a  region  full  of  peculiar  danger.  In 
that  attack  they  persevered  whilst  others  were 
taken  from  the  field.  In  that  attack  they 
themselves    speedily    fell.      They   worked  but    a 


112  THE  HEROIC  IN  MISSIONS 

little    while,    yet    they   cannot    have    worked    in 
vain. 

The  memory  of  Mr.  Robinson  is  kept  green  at 
Cambridge  by  the  formation  of  the  Hausa 
Association  to  promote  the  study  of  that 
language.  The  Association  has  already  sent  one 
student  to  Africa  to  pursue  his  linguistic  work 
on  the  spot.  It  is  an  agency  which  may  never 
win  the  attention  of  more  than  the  few,  and  3'et 
may  most  vitally  affect  the  future  of  mission 
work  in  the  Niger  Sudan. 


Pylntcd  by  Bai.i.aniynf,,  Hanson  &  Co. 
London  6^  Edinlnn\s:h. 


